UC-NRLF 


B    3    TE3    Tbfi 


CHARACTER    AND    OPINION 
IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 


BY  THE  SAME  AUTHOR 

THE  LIFE  OF  REASON 

OR   THE    PHASES   OF    HUMAN    PROGRESS 

Vol.  I.  Reason  in  Common  Sense. 
Vol.  n.  Reason  in  Society. 
Vol.  HI.  Reason  in  Religion. 

Vol.  IV.  Reason  in  Art. 

Vol.  V.  Reason  in  Science. 

^> 

^  INTERPRETATIONS  OF  POETRY 
AND  RELIGION 

y   THE  SENSE  OF  BEAUTY 

LITTLE  ESSAYS  DRAWN  FROM 
THE  WRITINGS  OF  GEORGE 

SANTAYANA 

Edited  with  a  Preface  by 

LOGAN  PEARSALL  SMITH 

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.^e^^iU^^ 


CHARACTER  &  OPINION 


IN   THE 


UNITED  STATES 

WITH  REMINISCENCES  OF 

WILLIAM  JAMES  AND  JOSIAH  ROYCE 

AND  ACADEMIC  LIFE  IN  AMERICA 


BY 

GEORGE  SANTAYANA 

LATE  PROFESSOR  Of  PfilLOSOPHY  IN  HARVARD  UNIVERSITY 


NEW  YORK 

CHAJILES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 
1922 


^ 


r  5 


J: 


PREFACE 

The  major  part  of  this  book  is  composed 
of  lectures  originally  addressed  to  British 
audiences.  I  have  added  a  good  deal,  but 
I  make  no  apology,  now  that  the  whole  may 
fall  under  American  eyes,  for  preserving  the 
tone  and  attitude  of  a  detached  observer. 
Not  at  all  on  the  ground  that  "  to  see  our- 
selves as  others  see  us  "  would  be  to  see 
ourselves  truly  ;  on  the  contrary,  I  agree 
with  Spinoza  where  he  says  that  other 
people's  idea  of  a  man  is  apt  to  be  a  better 
expression  of  their  nature  than  of  his.  I 
accept  this  principle  in  the  present  instance, 
and  am  willing  it  should  be  applied  to  the 
judgements  contained  in  this  book,  in  which 
the  reader  may  see  chiefly  expressions  of  my 
own  feelings  and  hints  of  my  own  opinions. 
Only  an  American — and  I  am  not  one  except 
by  long  association  ^ — can  speak  for  the  heart 

1  Perhaps  I  should  add  that  I  have  not  been  in  the  United 
States  since  January  11912.  My  observations  stretched,  vdth 
some  intervals,  through  the  forty  years  preceding  that  date. 


585 


vi        CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

of  America.  I  try  to  understand  it,  as  a 
family  friend  may  who  has  a  different  tem- 
perament ;  but  it  is  only  my  own  mind  that 
I  speak  for  at  bottom,  or  wish  to  speak  for. 
Certainly  my  sentiments  are  of  little  im- 
portance compared  with  the  volume  and 
destiny  of  the  things  I  discuss  here  :  yet  the 
critic  and  artist  too  have  their  rights,  and  to 
take  as  calm  and  as  long  a  view  as  possible 
seems  to  be  but  another  name  for  the  love 
of  truth.  Moreover,  I  suspect  that  my  feel- 
ings are  secretly  shared  by  many  people  in 
America,  natives  and  foreigners,  who  may 
not  have  the  courage  or  the  occasion  to 
express  them  frankly.  After  all,  it  has  been 
acquaintance  with  America  and  American 
philosophers  that  has  chiefly  contributed  to 
clear  and  to  settle  my  own  mind.  I  have  no 
axe  to  grind,  only  my  thoughts  to  burnish, 
in  the  hope  that  some  part  of  the  truth  of 
things  may  be  reflected  there  ;  and  I  am 
confident  of  not  giving  serious  offence  to  the 
judicious,  because  they  will  feel  that  it  is 
affection  for  the  American  people  that  makes 
me  wish  that  what  is  best  and  most  beautiful 
should  not  be  absent  from  their  lives. 

Civilisation  is  perhaps  approaching  one  of 


PREFACE  vii 

those  long  winters  that  overtake  it  from  time 
to  time.  A  flood  of  barbarism  from  below 
may  soon  level  all  the  fair  works  of  our 
Christian  ancestors,  as  another  flood  two 
thousand  years  ago  levelled  those  of  the 
ancients.  Romantic  Christendom  —  pictur- 
esque, passionate,  unhappy  episode — may  be 
coming  to  an  end.  Such  a  catastrophe  would 
be  no  reason  for  despair.  Nothing  lasts  for 
ever ;  but  the  elasticity  of  life  is  wonderful, 
and  even  if  the  world  lost  its  memory  it  could 
not  lose  its  youth.  Under  the  deluge,  and 
watered  by  it,  seeds  of  all  sorts  would  survive 
against  the  time  to  come,  even  if  what  might 
eventually  spring  from  them,  under  the  new 
circumstances,  should  wear  a  strange  aspect. 
In  a  certain  measure,  and  unintentionally, 
both  this  destruction  and  this  restoration 
have  already  occurred  in  America.  There  is 
much  forgetfulness,  much  callow  disrespect 
for  what  is  past  or  alien  ;  but  there  is  a  fund 
of  vigour,  goodness,  and  hope  such  as  no 
nation  ever  possessed  before.  In  what  some- 
times looks  like  American  greediness  and 
jostling  for  the  front  place,  all  is  love  of 
achievement,  nqthing  is  unkindness ;  it  is  a 
fearless  people,  and  free  from  malice,  as  you 


viii      CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

might  see  in  their  eyes  and  gestures,  even  if 
their  conduct  did  not  prove  it.  This  soil  is 
propitious  to  every  seed,  and  tares  must 
needs  grow  in  it ;  but  why  should  it  not  also 
breed  clear  thinking,  honest  judgement,  and 
rational  happiness  ?  These  things  are  indeed 
not  necessary  to  existence,  and  without  them 
America  might  long  remain  rich  and  populous 
like  many  a  barbarous  land  in  the  past ;  but 
in  that  case  its  existence  would  be  hounded, 
like  theirs,  by  falsity  and  remorse.  May 
Heaven  avert  the  omen,  and  make  the  new 
world  a  better  world  than  the  old  !  In  the 
classical  and  romantic  tradition  of  Europe, 
love,  of  which  there  was  very  little,  was 
supposed  to  be  kindled  by  beauty,  of  which 
there  was  a  great  deal :  perhaps  moral 
chemistry  may  be  able  to  reverse  this  opera- 
tion, and  in  the  future  and  in  America  it 
may  breed  beauty  out  of  love. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  I 

PAGX 

The  Moral  Background 1 

CHAPTER   II 

The  Academic  Environment S5 


CHAPTER   III 

William  James 64 


CHAPTER   IV 
Josiah  Royce 97 

CHAPTER   V 
Later  Speculations 139 

CHAPTER   VI 

Materialism  and  Idealism  in  American  Life        .       l65 

CHAPTER   VII 

English  Liberty  in  America  ....       192 

ix 


CHAPTER  I 

THE   MORAL   BACKGROUND 

About  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
in  the  quiet  sunshine  of  provincial  pros- 
perity, New  England  had  an  Indian  summer 
of  the  mind ;  and  an  agreeable  reflective 
literature  showed  how  brilliant  that  russet 
and  yellow  season  could  be.  There  were 
poets,  historians,  orators,  preachers,  most  of 
whom  had  studied  foreign  literatures  and  had 
travelled  ;  they  demurely  kept  up  with  the 
times  ;  they  were  universal  humanists.  But 
it  was  all  a  harvest  of  leaves  ;  these  worthies 
had  an  expurgated  and  barren  conception 
of  life  ;  theirs  was  the  purity  of  sweet  old 
age.  Sometimes  they  made  attempts  to  re- 
juvenate their  minds  by  broaching  native 
subjects  ;  they  wished  to  prove  how  much 
matter  for  poetry  the  new  world  supplied, 
and  they  wrote  "flip  van  Winkle,"  "  Hia- 


2         CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

watha,"  or  "  Evangeline " ;  but  the  in- 
spiration did  not  seem  much  more  American 
than  that  of  Swift  or  Ossian  or  Chateau- 
briand. These  cultivated  writers  lacked 
native  roots  and  fresh  sap  because  the 
American  intellect  itself  lacked  them.  Their 
culture  was  half  a  pious  survival,  half  an 
intentional  acquirement ;  it  was  not  the 
inevitable  flowering  of  a  fresh  experience. 
Later  there  have  been  admirable  analytic 
novelists  who  have  depicted  American  life 
as  it  is,  but  rather  bitterly,  rather  sadly ; 
as  if  the  joy  and  the  illusion  of  it  did  not 
inspire  them,  but  only  an  abstract  interest 
in  their  own  art.  If  any  one,  like  Walt 
Whitman,  penetrated  to  the  feelings  and 
images  which  the  American  scene  was  able 
to  breed  out  of  itself,  and  filled  them  with  a 
frank  and  broad  afflatus  of  his  own,  there 
is  no  doubt  that  he  misrepresented  the  con- 
scious minds  of  cultivated  Americans;  in 
them  the  head  as  yet  did  not  belong  to 
the  trunk. 

Nevertheless,  belles-lettres  in  the  United 
States — which  after  all  stretch  beyond  New 
England — have  always  had  two  points  of 
contact  with  the  great  national  experiment. 


THE  MORAL  BACKGROUND         3 

One  point  of  contact  has  been  oratory,  with 
that  sort  of  poetry,  patriotic,  religious,  or 
moral,  which  has  the  function  of  oratory. 
Eloquence  is  a  republican  art,  as  conversa- 
tion is  an  aristocratic  one.  By  eloquence 
at  public  meetings  and  dinners,  in  the  pulpit 
or  in  the  press,  the  impulses  of  the  com- 
munity could  be  brought  to  expression ; 
consecrated  maxims  could  be  reapplied ; 
the  whole  latent  manliness  and  shrewdness 
of  the  nation  could  be  mobilised.  In  the 
form  of  oratory  reflection,  rising  out  of  the 
problems  of  action,  could  be  turned  to  guide 
or  to  sanction  action,  and  sometimes  could 
attain,  in  so  doing,  a  notable  elevation  of 
thought.  Although  Americans,  and  many 
other  people,  usually  say  that  thought  is 
for  the  sake  of  action,  it  has  evidently  been 
in  these  high  moments,  when  action  became 
incandescent  in  thought,  that  they  have 
been  most  truly  alive,  intensively  most 
active,  and  although  doing  nothing,  have 
found  at  last  that  their  existence  was  worth 
while.  Reflection  is  itself  a  turn,  and  the 
top  turn,  given  to  life.  Here  is  the  second 
point  at  which  literature  in  America  has 
fused  with  the  activities  of  the  nation  :    it 


4         CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

has_  paused  to  enjoy  them.  Every  animal 
has  his  festive  and  ceremonious  moments, 
when  he  poses  or  plumes  himself  or  thinks  ; 
sometimes  he  even  sings  and  flies  aloft  in  a 
sort  of  ecstasy.  Somewhat  in  the  same  way, 
when  reflection  in  man  becomes  dominant, 
it  may  become  passionate  ;  it  may  create 
religion  or  philosophy  —  adventures  often 
more  thrilling  than  the  humdrum  experi- 
ence they  are  supposed  to  interrupt. 

This  pure  flame  of  mind  is  nothing  new, 
superadded,  or  alien  in  America.  It  is 
notorious  how  metaphysical  was  the  passion 
that  drove  the  Puritans  to  those  shores ; 
they  went  there  in  the  hope  of  living  more 
perfectly  in  the  spirit.  And  their  pilgrim's 
progress  was  not  finished  when  they  had 
founded  their  churches  in  the  wilderness  ; 
an  endless  migration  of  the  mind  was  still 
before  them,  a  flight  from  those  new  idols 
and  servitudes  which  prosperity  involves, 
and  the  eternal  lure  of  spiritual  freedom 
and  truth.  The  moral  world  always  con- 
tains undiscovered  or  thinly  peopled  con- 
tinents open  to  those  who  are  more  attached 
to  what  might  or  should  be  than  to  what 
already  is.     Americans   are   eminently   pro- 


THE  MORAL  BACKGROUND         5 

phets  ;  they  apply  morals  to  public  affairs  ; 
they  are  impatient  and  enthusiastic.  Their 
judgements  have  highly  speculative  implica- 
tions, which  they  often  make  explicit ;  they 
are  men  with  principles,  and  fond  of  stating 
them.  Moreover,  they  have  an  intense  self- 
reliance  ;  to  exercise  private  judgement  is 
not  only  a  habit  with  them  but  a  conscious 
duty.  Not  seldom  personal  conversions  and 
mystical  experiences  throw  their  ingrained 
faith  into  novel  forms,  which  may  be  very 
bold  and  radical.  They  are  traditionally 
exercised  about  religion,  and  adrift  on  the 
subject  more  than  any  other  people  on 
earth ;  and  if  religion  is  a  dreaming  philo- 
sophy, and  philosophy  a  waking  religion,  a 
people  so  wide  awake  and  so  religious  as  the 
old  Yankees  ought  certainly  to  have  been 
rich  in  philosophers. 

In  fact,  philosophy  in  the  good  old  sense 
of  curiosity  about  the  nature  of  things,  with 
readiness  to  make  the  best  of  them,  has 
not  been  absent  from  the  practice  of  Ameri- 
cans or  from  their  humorous  moods  ;  their 
humour  and  shrewdness  are  sly  comments  on 
the  shortcomings^  of  some  polite  convention 
that  everybody  accepts  tacitly,  yet  feels  to 


6         CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

be  insecure  and  contrary  to  the  principles 
on  which  Hfe  is  actually  carried  on.  Never- 
theless, with  the  shyness  which  simple  com- 
petence often  shows  in  the  presence  of 
conventional  shams,  these  wits  have  not 
taken  their  native  wisdom  very  seriously. 
They  have  not  had  the  leisure  nor  the 
intellectual  scope  to  think  out  and  defend 
the  implications  of  their  homely  perceptions. 
Their  fresh  insight  has  been  whispered  in 
parentheses  and  asides  ;  it  has  been  humbly 
banished,  in  alarm,  from  their  solemn 
moments.  What  people  have  respected  have 
been  rather  scraps  of  official  philosophy,  or 
entire  systems,  which  they  have  inherited 
or  imported,  as  they  have  respected  operas 
and  art  museums.  To  be  on  speaking  terms 
with  these  fine  things  was  a  part  of  social 
respectability,  like  having  family  silver. 
High  thoughts  must  be  at  hand,  like  those 
candlesticks,  probably  candleless,  sometimes 
displayed  as  a  seemly  ornament  in  a  room 
blazing  with  electric  light.  Even  in  William 
James,  spontaneous  and  stimulating  as  he 
was,  a  certain  underlying  discomfort  was 
discernible  ;  he  had  come  out  into  the  open, 
into  what  should  have  been  the  sunshine, 


THE  MORAL  BACKGROUND         7 

but  the  vast  shadow  of  the  temple  still  stood 
between  him  and  the  sun.  He  was  worried 
about  what  ought  to  be  believed  and  the 
awful  deprivations  of  disbelieving.  What 
he  called  the  cynical  view  of  anything  had 
first  to  be  brushed  aside,  without  stopping 
to  consider  whether  it  was  not  the  true  one  ; 
and  he  was  bent  on  finding  new  and  empirical 
reasons  for  clinging  to  free-will,  departed 
spirits,  and  tutelary  gods.  Nobody,  except 
perhaps  in  this  last  decade,  has  tried  to 
bridge  the  chasm  between  what  he  believes 
in  daily  life  and  the  "  problems  "  of  philo- 
sophy. Nature  and  science  have  not  been 
ignored,  and  "  practice  "  in  some  schools  has 
been  constantly  referred  to ;  but  instead 
of  supplying  philosophy  with  its  data  they 
have  only  constituted  its  difficulties ;  its 
function  has  been  not  to  build  on  known 
facts  but  to  explain  them  away.  Hence  a 
curious  alternation  and  irrelevance,  as  be- 
tween weekdays  and  Sabbaths,  between 
American  ways  and  American  opinions. 

That  philosophy  should  be  attached  to 
tradition  would  be  a  great  advantage,  con- 
ducive to  mutual  understanding,  to  maturity, 
and  to  progress,  if  the  tradition  lay  in  the 


8         CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

highway  of  truth.  To  deviate  from  it  in 
that  case  would  be  to  betray  the  fact  that, 
while  one  might  have  a  lively  mind,  one  was 
not  master  of  the  subject.  Unfortunately, 
in  the  nineteenth  century,  in  America  as 
elsewhere,  the  ruling  tradition  was  not  only 
erratic  and  far  from  the  highway  of  truth, 
but  the  noonday  of  this  tradition  was  over, 
and  its  classic  forms  were  outgrown.  A 
philosophy  may  have  a  high  value,  other 
than  its  truth  to  things,  in  its  truth  to 
method  and  to  the  genius  of  its  author ;  it 
may  be  a  feat  of  synthesis  and  imagination, 
like  a  great  poem,  expressing  one  of  the 
eternal  possibilities  of  being,  although  one 
which  the  creator  happened  to  reject  when 
he  made  this  world.  It  is  possible  to  be  a 
master  in  false  philosophy — easier,  in  fact, 
than  to  be  a  master  in  the  truth,  because 
a  false  philosophy  can  be  made  as  simple 
and  consistent  as  one  pleases.  Such  had 
been  the  masters  of  the  tradition  prevalent 
in  New  England — Calvin,  Hume,  Fichte,  not 
to  mention  others  more  relished  because  less 
pure  ;  but  one  of  the  disadvantages  of  such 
perfection  in  error  is  that  the  illusion  is 
harder    to    transmit    to    another    age    and 


THE  MORAL  BACKGROUND         9 

country.  If  Jonathan  Edwards,  for  in- 
stance, was  a  Calvinist  of  pristine  force 
and  perhaps  the  greatest  master  in  false 
philosophy  that  America  has  yet  produced, 
he  paid  the  price  by  being  abandoned,  even 
in  his  lifetime,  by  his  own  sect,  and  seeing 
the  world  turn  a  deaf  ear  to  his  logic 
without  so  much  as  attempting  to  refute  it. 
One  of  the  peculiarities  of  recent  speculation, 
especially  in  America,  is  that  ideas  are 
abandoned  in  virtue  of  a  mere  change  of 
feeling,  without  any  new  evidence  or  new 
arguments.  We  do  not  nowadays  refute 
our  predecessors,  we  pleasantly  bid  them 
good-bye.  Even  if  all  our  principles  are 
unwittingly  traditional  we  do  not  like  to 
bow  openly  to  authority.  Hence  masters 
like  Calvin,  Hume,  or  Fichte  rose  before 
their  American  admirers  like  formidable 
ghosts,  foreign  and  unseizable.  People  re- 
fused to  be  encumbered  with  any  system, 
even  one  of  their  own  ;  they  were  content 
to  imbibe  more  or  less  of  the  spirit  of  a 
philosophy  and  to  let  it  play  on  such  facts 
as  happened  to  attract  their  attention.  The 
originality  even  of  Emerson  and  of  William 
James  was  of  this  incidental  character  ;  they 


10       CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

found  new  approaches  to  old  beliefs  or  new 
expedients  in  old  dilemmas.  They  were  not 
in  a  scholastic  sense  pupils  of  anybody  or 
masters  in  anything.  They  hated  the  schol- 
astic way  of  saying  what  they  meant,  if 
they  had  heard  of  it ;  they  insisted  on  a 
personal  freshness  of  style,  refusing  to  make 
their  thought  more  precise  than  it  happened 
to  be  spontaneously ;  and  they  lisped  their 
logic,  when  the  logic  came. 

We  must  remember  that  ever  since  the 
days  of  Socrates,  and  especially  after  the 
establishment  of  Christianity,  the  dice  of 
thought  have  been  loaded.  Certain  pledges 
have  preceded  inquiry  and  divided  the 
possible  conclusions  beforehand  into  the 
acceptable  and  the  inacceptable,  the  edi- 
fying and  the  shocking,  the  noble  and  the 
base.  Wonder  has  no  longer  been  the  root 
of  philosophy,  but  sometimes  impatience 
at  having  been  cheated  and  sometimes  fear 
of  being  undeceived.  The  marvel  of  exist- 
ence, in  which  the  luminous  and  the  opaque 
are  so  romantically  mingled,  no  longer  lay 
like  a  sea  open  to  intellectual  adventure, 
tempting  the  mind  to  conceive  some  bold 
and  curious  system  of  the  universe    on  the 


THE  MORAL  BACKGROUND       11 

analogy  of  what  had  been  so  far  discovered. 
Instead,  people  were  confronted  with  an  ortho- 
doxy— though  not  always  the  same  orthodoxy 
—  whispering  mysteries  and  brandishing 
anathemas.  Their  wits  were  absorbed  in 
solving  traditional  problems,  many  of  them 
artificial  and  such  as  the  ruling  orthodoxy 
had  created  by  its  gratuitous  assumptions. 
Difficulties  were  therefore  found  in  some 
perfectly  obvious  truths ;  and  obvious  fables, 
if  they  were  hallowed  by  association,  were 
seriously  weighed  in  the  balance  against  one 
another  or  against  the  facts;  and  many  an 
actual  thing  was  proved  to  be  impossible,  or 
was  hidden  under  a  false  description.  In 
conservative  schools  the  student  learned  and 
tried  to  fathom  the  received  solutions  ;  in 
liberal  schools  he  was  perhaps  invited  to 
seek  solutions  of  his  own,  but  still  to  the 
old  questions.  Freedom,  when  nominally 
allowed,  was  a  provisional  freedom  ;  if  your 
wanderings  did  not  somehow  bring  you  back 
to  orthodoxy  you  were  a  misguided  being, 
no  matter  how  disparate  from  the  orthodox 
might  be  the  field  from  which  you  fetched 
your  little  harvest;  and  if  you  could  not 
be   answered     you   were    called   superficial. 


12       CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

Most  spirits  are  cowed  by  such  disparage- 
ment ;  but  even  those  who  snap  their  fingers 
at  it  do  not  escape  ;  they  can  hardly  help 
feeling  that  in  calling  a  spade  a  spade  they 
are  petulant  and  naughty  ;  or  if  their  in- 
spiration is  too  genuine  for  that,  they  still 
unwittingly  shape  their  opinions  in  contrast 
to  those  that  claim  authority,  and  there- 
fore on  the  same  false  lines — a  terrible  tax 
to  pay  to  the  errors  of  others  ;  and  it  is 
only  here  and  there  that  a  very  great  and 
solitary  mind,  like  that  of  Spinoza,  can 
endure  obloquy  without  bitterness  or  can 
pass  through  perverse  controversies  without 
contagion. 

Under  such  circumstances  it  is  obvious 
that  speculation  can  be  frank  and  happy 
only  where  orthodoxy  has  receded,  abandon- 
ing a  larger  and  larger  field  to  unprejudiced 
inquiry  ;  or  else  (as  has  happened  among 
liberal  Protestants)  where  the  very  heart  of 
orthodoxy  has  melted,  has  absorbed  the  most 
alien  substances,  and  is  ready  to  bloom  into 
anything  that  anybody  finds  attractive.  This 
is  the  secret  of  that  extraordinary  vogue 
which  the  transcendental  philosophy  has 
had  for  nearly  a  century  in  Great  Britain 


THE  MORAL  BACKGROUND       13 

and  America ;  it  is  a  method  which  enables 
a  man  to  renovate  all  his  beliefs,  scientific 
and  religious,  from  the  inside,  giving  them  a 
new  status  and  interpretation  as  phases  of 
his  own  experience  or  imagination;  so  that 
he  does  not  seem  to  himself  to  reject  any- 
thing, and  yet  is  bound  to  nothing,  except  to 
his  creative  self.  Many  too  who  have  no 
inclination  to  practise  this  transcendental 
method — a  personal,  arduous,  and  futile  art, 
which  requires  to  be  renewed  at  every  moment 
— have  been  impressed  with  the  results  or  the 
maxims  of  this  or  that  transcendental  philo- 
sopher, such  as  that  every  opinion  leads  on 
to  another  that  reinterprets  it,  or  every  evil 
to  some  higher  good  that  contains  it ;  and 
they  have  managed  to  identify  these  views 
with  what  still  seemed  to  them  vital  in 
religion. 

In  spite  of  this  profound  mutation  at  the 
core,  and  much  paring  at  the  edges,  tradi- 
tional belief  in  New  England  retained  its 
continuity  and  its  priestly  unction ;  and 
religious  teachers  and  philosophers  could 
slip  away  from  Calvinism  and  even  from 
Christianity  without  any  loss  of  elevation 
or    austerity.     They    found    it    so    pleasant 


14       CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

and  easy  to  elude  the  past  that  they  really 
had  no  quarrel  with  it.  The  world,  they 
felt,  was  a  safe  place,  watched  over  by  a 
kindly  God,  who  exacted  nothing  but  cheer- 
fulness and  good-will  from  his  children ;  and 
the  American  flag  was  a  sort  of  rainbow  in 
the  sky,  promising  that  all  storms  were  over. 
Or  if  storms  came,  such  as  the  Civil  War, 
they  would  not  be  harder  to  weather  than 
was  necessary  to  test  the  national  spirit 
and  raise  it  to  a  new  efficiency.  The  subtler 
dangers  which  we  may  now  see  threatening 
America  had  not  yet  come  in  sight — material 
restlessness  was  not  yet  ominous,  the  press- 
ure of  business  enterprises  was  not  yet  out 
of  scale  with  the  old  life  or  out  of  key  with 
the  old  moral  harmonies.  A  new  type  of 
American  had  not  appeared — the  untrained, 
pushing,  cosmopolitan  orphan,  cock-sure  in 
manner  but  not  too  sure  in  his  morality,  to 
whom  the  old  Yankee,  with  his  sour  integrity, 
is  almost  a  foreigner.  Was  not  "  increase," 
in  the  Bible,  a  synonym  for  benefit  ?  Was 
not  "  abundance  "  the  same,  or  almost  the 
same,  as  happiness  ? 

Meantime  the  churches,  a  little  ashamed 
of  their  past,  began  to  court  the  good  opinion 


THE  MORAL  BACKGROUND       15 

of  so  excellent  a  wofld.  Although  called 
evangelical,  they  were  far,  very  far,  from 
prophesying  its  end,  or  offering  a  refuge  from 
it,  or  preaching  contempt  for  it ;  they  existed 
only  to  serve  it,  and  their  highest  divine 
credential  was  that  the  world  needed  them. 
Irreligion,  dissoluteness,  and  pessimism — 
supposed  naturally  to  go  together  —  could 
never  prosper  ;  they  were  incompatible  with 
efficiency.  That  was  the  supreme  test.  "  Be 
Christians,"  I  once  heard  a  president  of  Yale 
College  cry  to  his  assembled  pupils,  "  be 
Christians  and  you  will  be  successful." 
Religion  was  indispensable  and  sacred,  when 
not  carried  too  far  ;  but  theology  might  well 
be  unnecessary.  Why  distract  this  world 
with  talk  of  another  ?  Enough  for  the  day 
was  the  good  thereof.  Religion  should  be 
disentangled  as  much  as  possible  from  history 
and  authority  and  metaphysics,  and  made  to 
rest  honestly  on  one's  fine  feelings,  on  one's 
indomitable  optimism  and  trust  in  life. 
Revelation  was  nothing  miraculous,  given 
once  for  all  in  some  remote  age  and  foreign 
country  ;  it  must  come  to  us  directly,  and 
with  greater  authority  now  than  ever  before. 
If  evolution  was  to  be  taken  seriously  and  to 


16       CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

include  moral  growth,  the  great  men  of  the 
past  could  only  be  stepping-stones  to  our 
own  dignity.  To  grow  was  to  contain  and 
sum  up  all  the  good  that  had  gone  before, 
adding  an  appropriate  increment.  Un- 
doubtedly some  early  figures  were  beautiful, 
and  allowances  had  to  be  made  for  local 
influences  in  Palestine,  a  place  so  much  more 
primitive  and  backward  than  Massachusetts. 
Jesus  was  a  prophet  more  winsome  and  nearer 
to  ourselves  than  his  predecessors  ;  but  how 
could  any  one  deny  that  the  twenty  centuries 
of  progress  since  his  time  must  have  raised 
a  loftier  pedestal  for  Emerson  or  Channing  or 
Phillips  Brooks  ?  It  might  somehow  not  be 
in  good  taste  to  put  this  feeling  into  clear 
words  ;  one  and  perhaps  two  of  these  men 
would  have  deprecated  it ;  nevertheless  it 
beamed  with  refulgent  self-satisfaction  in  the 
lives  and  maxims  of  most  of  their  followers. 

All  this  liberalism,  however,  never  touched 
the  centre  of  traditional  orthodoxy,  and  those 
who,  for  all  their  modernness,  felt  that  they 
inherited  the  faith  of  their  fathers  and  were 
true  to  it  were  fundamentally  right.  There 
was  still  an  orthodoxy  among  American  high- 
brows at  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century, 


THE  MORAL  BACKGROUND        17 

dissent  from  which  was  felt  to  be  scandalous  ; 
it  consisted  in  holding  that  the  universe  exists 
and  is  governed  for  the  sake  of  man  or  of  the 
human  spirit.  This  persuasion,  arrogant  as 
it  might  seem,  is  at  bottom  an  expression  of 
impotence  rather  than  of  pride.  The  soul  is 
originally  vegetative  ;  it  feels  the  weal  and 
woe  of  what  occurs  within  the  body.  With 
locomotion  and  the  instinct  to  hunt  and  to 
flee,  animals  begin  to  notice  external  things 
also ;  but  the  chief  point  noticed  about  them 
is  whether  they  are  good  or  bad,  friendly 
or  hostile,  far  or  near.  The  station  of  the 
animal  and  his  interests  thus  become  the 
measure  of  all  things  for  him,  in  so  far  as  he 
knows  them  ;  and  this  aspect  of  them  is,  by 
a  primitive  fatality,  the  heart  of  them  to 
him.  It  is  only  reason  that  can  discount 
these  childish  perspectives,  neutralise  the 
bias  of  each  by  collating  it  with  the  others, 
and  masterfully  conceive  the  field  in  which 
their  common  objects  are  deployed,  dis- 
covering also  the  principle  of  foreshortening 
or  projection  which  produces  each  perspec- 
tive in  turn.  But  reason  is  a  later  comer 
into  this  world,  an^weak  ;  against  its  suasion 

stands  the  mighty  resistance  of  habit  and  of 

c 


18       CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

moral  presumption.  It  is  in  their  interest, 
and  to  rehabilitate  the  warm  vegetative 
autonomy  of  the  primitive  soul,  that  orthodox 
religion  and  philosophy  labour  in  the  western 
world — for  the  mind  of  India  cannot  be 
charged  with  this  folly.  Although  inwardly 
these  systems  have  not  now  a  good  conscience 
and  do  not  feel  very  secure  (for  they  are 
retrograde  and  sin  against  the  light),  yet  out- 
wardly they  are  solemn  and  venerable  ;  and 
they  have  incorporated  a  great  deal  of  moral 
wisdom  with  their  egotism  or  humanism — 
more  than  the  Indians  with  their  respect  for 
the  infinite.  In  deifying  human  interests 
they  have  naturally  studied  and  expressed 
them  justly,  whereas  those  who  perceive  the 
relativity  of  human  goods  are  tempted  to 
scorn  them — which  is  itself  unreasonable — 
and  to  sacrifice  them  all  to  the  single  passion 
of  worship  or  of  despair.  Hardly  anybody, 
except  possibly  the  Greeks  at  their  best,  has 
realised  the  sweetness  and  glory  of  being  a 
rational  animal. 

The  Jews,  as  we  know,  had  come  to  think 
that  it  was  the  creator  of  the  world,  the  God 
of  the  universe,  who  had  taken  them  for 
his  chosen  people.      Christians  in  turn  had 


THE  MORAL  BACKGROUND       19 

asserted  that  it  was  God  in  person  who, 
having  become  a  man,  had  founded  their 
church.  According  to  this  Hebraic  tradition, 
the  dignity  of  man  did  not  He  in  being  a 
mind  (which  he  undoubtedly  is)  but  in  being 
a  creature  materially  highly  favoured,  with 
a  longer  life  and  a  brighter  destiny  than  other 
creatures  in  the  world.  It  is  remarkable  how 
deep,  in  the  Hebraic  religions,  is  this  interest 
in  material  existence  ;  so  deep  that  we  are 
surprised  when  we  discover  that,  according 
to  the  insight  of  other  races,  this  interest  is 
the  essence  of  irreligion.  Some  detachment 
from  existence  and  from  hopes  of  material 
splendour  has  indeed  filtered  into  Chris- 
tianity through  Platonism.  Socrates  and 
his  disciples  admired  this  world,  but  they 
did  not  particularly  covet  it,  or  wish  to  live 
long  in  it,  or  expect  to  improve  it ;  what 
they  cared  for  was  an  idea  or  a  good  which 
they  found  expressed  in  it,  something  outside 
it  and  timeless,  in  which  the  contemplative 
intellect  might  be  literally  absorbed.  This 
philosophy  was  no  less  humanistic  than  that 
of  the  Jews,  though  in  a  less  material  fashion  : 
if  it  did  not  read  .the  universe  in  terms  of 
thrift,  it  read  it  in  terms  of  art.     The  pursuit 


20       CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

of  a  good,  such  as  is  presumably  aimed  at  in 
human  action,  was  supposed  to  inspire  every 
movement  in  nature  ;  and  this  good,  for  the 
sake  of  which  the  very  heavens  revolved, 
was  akin  to  the  intellectual  happiness  of  a 
Greek  sage.  Nature  was  a  philosopher  in 
pursuit  of  an  idea.  Natural  science  then 
took  a  moralising  turn  which  it  has  not  yet 
quite  outgrown.  Socrates  required  of  astro- 
nomy, if  it  was  to  be  true  science,  that  it 
should  show  why  it  was  best  that  the  sun 
and  moon  should  be  as  they  are  ;  and  Plato, 
refining  on  this,  assures  us  that  the  eyes  are 
placed  in  the  front  of  the  head,  rather  than 
at  the  back,  because  the  front  is  the  nobler 
quarter,  and  that  the  intestines  are  long  in 
order  that  we  may  have  leisure  between  meals 
to  study  philosophy.  Curiously  enough,  the 
very  enemies  of  final  causes  sometimes  catch 
this  infection  and  attach  absolute  values  to 
facts  in  an  opposite  sense  and  in  an  inhuman 
interest ;  and  you  often  hear  in  America 
that  whatever  is  is  right.  These  naturalists, 
while  they  rebuke  the  moralists  for  think- 
ing that  nature  is  ruled  magically  for  our 
good,  think  her  adorable  for  being  ruled, 
in   scorn   of   us,    only   by    her    own    laws ; 


THE  MORAL  BACKGROUND       21 

and  thus  we  oscillate  between  egotism  and 
idolatry. 

The  Reformation  did  not  reform  this 
belief  in  the  cosmic  supremacy  of  man,  or  the 
humanity  of  God  ;  on  the  contrary,  it  took 
it  (like  so  much  else)  in  terrible  German 
earnest,  not  suffering  it  any  longer  to  be 
accepted  somewhat  lightly  as  a  classical 
figure  of  speech  or  a  mystery  resting  on 
revelation.  The  human  race,  the  chosen 
people,  the  Christian  elect  were  like  taber- 
nacle within  tabernacle  for  the  spirit ;  but 
in  the  holy  of  holies  was  the  spirit  itself, 
one's  own  spirit  and  experience,  which  was 
the  centre  of  everything.  Protestant  philo- 
sophy, exploring  the  domain  of  science  and 
history  with  confidence,  and  sure  of  finding 
the  spirit  walking  there,  was  too  conscientious 
to  misrepresent  what  it  found.  As  the 
terrible  facts  could  not  be  altered  they  had 
to  be  undermined.  By  turning  psychology 
into  metaphysics  this  could  be  accomplished, 
and  we  could  reach  the  remarkable  conclusion 
that  the  human  spirit  was  not  so  much  the 
purpose  of  the  universe  as  its  seat,  and  the 
only  universe  there  was. 

This  conclusion,  which  sums  up  idealism 


22       CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

on  its  critical  or  scientific  side,  would  not  of 
itself  give  much  comfort  to  religious  minds, 
that  usually  crave  massive  support  rather 
than  sublime  independence  ;  it  leads  to  the 
heroic  egotism  of  Fichte  or  Nietzsche  rather 
than  to  any  green  pastures  beside  any  still 
waters.  But  the  critical  element  in  idealism 
can  be  used  to  destroy  belief  in  the  natural 
world  ;  and  by  so  doing  it  can  open  the  way 
to  another  sort  of  idealism,  not  at  all  critical, 
which  might  be  called  the  higher  super- 
stition. This  views  the  world  as  an  oracle 
or  charade,  concealing  a  dramatic  unity,  or 
formula,  or  maxim,  which  all  experience 
exists  to  illustrate.  The  habit  of  regarding 
existence  as  a  riddle,  with  a  surprising  solu- 
tion which  we  think  we  have  found,  should 
be  the  source  of  rather  mixed  emotions  ; 
the  facts  remain  as  they  were,  and  rival 
solutions  may  at  any  time  suggest  them- 
selves ;  and  the  one  we  have  hit  on  may 
not,  after  all,  be  particularly  comforting. 
The  Christian  may  find  himself  turned  by  it 
into  a  heathen,  the  humanist  into  a  pantheist, 
and  the  hope  with  which  we  instinctively 
faced  life  may  be  chastened  into  mere  con- 
formity.    Nevertheless,  however  chilling  and 


THE  MORAL  BACKGROUND       23 

inhuman  our  higher  superstition  may  prove, 
it  will  make  us  feel  that  we  are  masters  of 
a  mystical  secret,  that  we  have  a  faith  to 
defend,  and  that,  like  all  philosophers,  we 
have  taken  a  ticket  in  a  lottery  in  which  if 
we  hit  on  the  truth,  even  if  it  seems  a  blank, 
we  shall  have  drawn  the  first  prize* 

Orthodoxy  in  New  England,  even  so  trans- 
formed and  attenuated,  did  not  of  course 
hold  the  field  alone.  There  are  material- 
ists by  instinct  in  every  age  and  country  ; 
there  are  always  private  gentlemen  whom 
the  clergy  and  the  professors  cannot  deceive. 
Here  and  there  a  medical  or  scientific  man, 
or  a  man  of  letters,  will  draw  from  his  special 
pursuits  some  hint  of  the  nature  of  things  at 
large  ;  or  a  political  radical  will  nurse  un- 
dying wrath  against  all  opinions  not  tartly 
hostile  to  church  and  state.  But  these 
clever  people  are  not  organised,  they  are  not 
always  given  to  writing,  nor  speculative 
enough  to  make  a  system  out  of  their  con- 
victions. The  enthusiasts  and  the  peda- 
gogues naturally  flock  to  the  other  camp. 
The  very  competence  which  scientific  people 
and  connoisseurs  have  in  their  special  fields 
disinclines  them  to  generalise,  or  renders  their 


24       CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

generalisations  one-sided ;  so  that  their  specu- 
lations are  extraordinarily  weak  and  stammer- 
ing. Both  by  what  they  represent  and  by 
what  they  ignore  they  are  isolated  and 
deprived  of  influence,  since  only  those  who 
are  at  home  in  a  subject  can  feel  the  force  of 
analogies  drawn  from  that  field,  whereas 
any  one  can  be  swayed  by  sentimental  and 
moral  appeals,  by  rhetoric  and  unction. 
Furthermore,  in  America,  the  materialistic 
school  is  without  that  support  from  popular 
passions  which  it  draws  in  many  European 
countries  from  its  association  with  anti- 
clericalism  or  with  revolutionary  politics ; 
and  it  also  lacks  the  maturity,  self-confidence, 
and  refinement  proper  in  older  societies  to 
the  great  body  of  Epicurean  and  disen- 
chanted opinion,  where  for  centuries  wits, 
critics,  minor  philosophers,  and  men  of  the 
world  have  chuckled  together  over  their 
Horace,  their  Voltaire,  and  their  Gibbon. 
The  horror  which  the  theologians  have  of 
infidelity  passes  therefore  into  the  average 
American  mind  unmitigated  by  the  suspicion 
that  anything  pleasant  could  lie  in  that 
quarter,  much  less  the  open  way  to  nature 
and  truth  and  a  secure  happiness. 


THE  MORAL  BACKGROUND       25 

There  is  another  handicap,  of  a  more 
technical  sort,  under  which  naturahstic  philo- 
sophy labours  in  America,  as  it  does  in 
England  ;  it  has  been  crossed  by  scepticism 
about  the  validity  of  perception  and  has 
become  almost  identical  with  psychology. 
Of  course,  for  any  one  who  thinks  natural- 
istically  (as  the  British  empiricists  did  in 
the  beginning,  like  every  unsophisticated 
mortal),  psychology  is  the  description  of  a 
very  superficial  and  incidental  complica- 
tion in  the  animal  kingdom :  it  treats  of 
the  curious  sensibility  and  volatile  thoughts 
awakened  in  the  mind  by  the  growth  and 
fortunes  of  the  body.  In  noting  these 
thoughts  and  feelings,  we  can  observe  how 
far  they  constitute  true  knowledge  of  the 
world  in  which  they  arise,  how  far  they  ignore 
it,  and  how  far  they  play  with  it,  by  virtue 
of  the  poetry  and  the  syntax  of  discourse 
which  they  add  out  of  their  own  exuberance  ; 
for  fancy  is  a  very  fertile  treacherous  thing, 
as  every  one  finds  when  he  dreams.  But 
dreams  run  over  into  waking  life,  and  some- 
times seem  to  permeate  and  to  underlie  it ; 
and  it  was  just  this  suspicion  that  he 
might  be  dreammg  awake,  that  discourse  and 


26       CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

tradition  might  be  making  a  fool  of  him, 
that  prompted  the  hard-headed  Briton,  even 
before  the  Reformation,  to  appeal  from 
conventional  beliefs  to  "  experience."  He 
was  anxious  to  clear  away  those  sophistries 
and  impostures  of  which  he  was  particularly 
apprehensive,  in  view  of  the  somewhat  foreign 
character  of  his  culture  and  religion.  Ex- 
perience, he  thought,  would  bear  unim- 
peachable witness  to  the  nature  of  things  ; 
for  by  experience  he  understood  knowledge 
produced  by  direct  contact  with  the  object. 
Taken  in  this  sense,  experience  is  a  method 
of  discovery,  an  exercise  of  intelligence  ;  it 
is  the  same  observation  of  things,  strict, 
cumulative,  and  analytic,  which  produces 
the  natural  sciences.  It  rests  on  naturalistic 
assumptions  (since  we  know  when  and  where 
we  find  our  data)  and  could  not  fail  to  end 
in  materialism.  What  prevented  British 
empiricism  from  coming  to  this  obvious 
conclusion  was  a  peculiarity  of  the  national 
temperament.  The  Englishman  is  not  only 
distrustful  of  too  much  reasoning  and  too 
much  theory  (and  science  and  materialism 
involve  a  good  deal  of  both),  but  he  is 
also  fond  of  musing  and  of  withdrawing  into 


THE  MORAL  BACKGROUND       27 

his  inner  man.  Accordingly  his  empiricism 
took  an  introspective  form ;  Hke  Hamlet  he 
stopped  at  the  how ;  he  began  to  think 
about  thinking.  His  first  care  was  now  to 
arrest  experience  as  he  underwent  it ;  though 
its  presence  could  not  be  denied,  it  came  in 
such  a  questionable  shape  that  it  could  not 
be  taken  at  its  word.  This  mere  presence  of 
experience,  this  ghostly  apparition  to  the 
inner  man,  was  all  that  empirical  philosophy 
could  now  profess  to  discover.  Far  from 
being  an  exercise  of  intelligence,  it  retracted 
all  understanding,  all  interpretation,  all  in- 
stinctive faith  ;  far  from  furnishing  a  sure 
record  of  the  truths  of  nature,  it  furnished 
a  set  of  pathological  facts,  the  passive  subject- 
matter  of  psychology.  These  now  seemed 
the  only  facts  admissible,  and  psychology,  for 
the  philosophers,  became  the  only  science. 
Experience  could  discover  nothing,  but  all 
discoveries  had  to  be  retracted,  so  that 
they  should  revert  to  the  fact  of  experience 
and  terminate  there.  Evidently  when  the 
naturalistic  background  and  meaning  of 
experience  have  dropped  out  in  this  way, 
empiricism  is  a  form  of  idealism,  since  what- 
ever objects  we  *can  come  upon  will  all  be 


28        CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

a  priori  and  a  fortiori  and  sensu  eminentiori 
ideal  in  the  mind.  The  irony  of  logic  actually 
made  English  empiricism,  understood  in  this 
psychological  way,  the  starting-point  for 
transcendentalism  and  for  German  philo- 
sophy. 

Between  these  two  senses  of  the  word 
experience,  meaning  sometimes  contact  with 
things  and  at  other  times  absolute  feeling, 
the  empirical  school  in  England  and  America 
has  been  helplessly  torn,  without  ever  show- 
ing the  courage  or  the  self-knowledge  to 
choose  between  them.  I  think  we  may  say 
that  on  the  whole  their  view  has  been  this  : 
that  feelings  or  ideas  were  absolute  atoms 
of  existence,  without  any  ground  or  source, 
so  that  the  elements  of  their  universe  were 
all  mental ;  but  they  conceived  these  psychi- 
cal elements  to  be  deployed  in  a  physical 
time  and  even  (since  there  were  many 
simultaneous  series  of  them)  in  some  sort 
of  space.  These  philosophers  were  accord- 
ingly idealists  about  substance  but  natural- 
ists about  the  order  and  relations  of  exist- 
ences ;  and  experience  on  their  lips  meant 
feeling  when  they  were  thinking  of  particulars, 
but   when   they   were   thinking  broadly,   in 


THE  MORAL  BACKGROUND       29 

matters  of  history  or  science,  experience 
meant  the  universal  nebula  or  cataract  which 
these  feelings  composed — itself  no  object  of 
experience,  but  one  believed  in  and  very 
imperfectly  presented  in  imagination.  These 
men  believed  in  nature,  and  were  materialists 
at  heart  and  to  all  practical  purposes  ;  but 
they  were  shy  intellectually,  and  seemed  to 
think  they  ran  less  risk  of  error  in  holding 
a  thing  covertly  than  in  openly  professing  it. 
If  any  one,  like  Herbert  Spencer,  kept 
psychology  in  its  place  and  in  that  respect 
remained  a  pure  naturalist,  he  often  for- 
feited this  advantage  by  enveloping  the 
positive  information  he  derived  from  the 
sciences  in  a  whirlwind  of  generalisations. 
The  higher  superstition,  the  notion  that 
nature  dances  to  the  tune  of  some  compre- 
hensive formula  or  some  magic  rhyme,  thus 
reappeared  among  those  who  claimed  to 
speak  for  natural  science.  In  their  romantic 
sympathy  with  nature  they  attributed  to  her 
an  excessive  sympathy  with  themselves ;  they 
overlooked  her  infinite  complications  and 
continual  irony,  and  candidly  believed  they 
could  measure  her  with  their  thumb-rules. 
Why  should  philosophers  drag  a  toy-net  of 


30       CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

words,  fit  to  catch  butterflies,  through  the 
sea  of  being,  and  expect  to  land  all  the  fish 
in  it  ?  Why  not  take  note  simply  of  what 
the  particular  sciences  can  as  yet  tell  us  of 
the  world  ?  Certainly,  when  put  together, 
they  already  yield  a  very  wonderful,  very 
true,  and  very  sufficient  picture  of  it.  Are 
we  impatient  of  knowing  everything  ?  But 
even  if  science  was  much  enlarged  it  would 
have  limits,  both  in  penetration  and  in 
extent;  and  there  would  always  remain,  I 
will  not  say  an  infinity  of  unsolved  problems 
(because  "  problems "  are  created  by  our 
impatience  or  our  contradictions),  but  an 
infinity  of  undiscovered  facts.  Nature  is 
like  a  beautiful  woman  that  may  be  as  de- 
lightfully and  as  truly  known  at  a  certain 
distance  as  upon  a  closer  view  ;  as  to  know- 
ing her  through  and  through,  that  is  nonsense 
in  both  cases,  and  might  not  reward  our 
pains.  The  love  of  all-inclusiveness  is  as 
dangerous  in  philosophy  as  in  art.  The 
savour  of  nature  can  be  enjoyed  by  us  only 
through  our  own  senses  and  insight,  and 
an  outline  map  of  the  entire  universe,  even 
if  it  was  not  fabulously  concocted,  would 
not  tell  us  much  that  was  worth  knowing 


THE  MORAL  BACKGROUND       31 

about  the  outlying  parts  of  it.  Without 
suggesting  for  a  moment  that  the  proper 
study  of  mankind  is  man  only — for  it  may 
be  landscape  or  mathematics — we  may  safely 
say  that  their  proper  study  is  what  lies 
within  their  range  and  is  interesting  to 
them.  For  this  reason  the  moralists  who 
consider  principally  human  life  and  paint 
nature  only  as  a  background  to  their  figures 
are  apt  to  be  better  philosophers  than  the 
speculative  naturalists.  In  human  life  we  are 
at  home,  and  our  views  on  it,  if  one-sided, 
are  for  that  very  reason  expressive  of  our 
character  and  fortunes.  An  unfortunate 
peculiarity  of  naturalistic  philosophers  is 
that  usually  they  have  but  cursory  and 
wretched  notions  of  the  inner  life  of  the 
mind ;  they  are  dead  to  patriotism  and  to  re- 
ligion, they  hate  poetry  and  fancy  and  passion 
and  even  philosophy  itself;  and  therefore 
(especially  if  their  science  too,  as  often 
happens,  is  borrowed  and  vague)  we  need 
not  wonder  if  the  academic  and  cultivated 
world  despises  them,  and  harks  back  to  the 
mythology  of  Plato  or  Aristotle  or  Hegel, 
who  at  least  were  conversant  with  the  spirit 
of  man. 


32       CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

Philosophers  are  very  severe  towards  other 
philosophers  because  they  expect  too  much. 
Even  under  the  most  favourable  circum- 
stances no  mortal  can  be  asked  to  seize  the 
truth  in  its  wholeness  or  at  its  centre.  As 
the  senses  open  to  us  only  partial  perspec- 
tives, taken  from  one  point  of  view,  and 
report  the  facts  in  symbols  which,  far  from 
being  adequate  to  the  full  nature  of  what 
surrounds  us,  resemble  the  coloured  signals 
of  danger  or  of  free  way  which  a  railway 
engine-driver  peers  at  in  the  night,  so  our 
speculation,  which  is  a  sort  of  panoramic 
sense,  approaches  things  peripherally  and 
expresses  them  humanly.  But  how  doubly 
dyed  in  this  subjectivity  must  our  thought  be 
when  an  orthodoxy  dominant  for  ages  has 
twisted  the  universe  into  the  service  of  moral 
interests,  and  when  even  the  heretics  are 
entangled  in  a  scepticism  so  partial  and 
arbitrary  that  it  substitutes  psychology, 
the  most  derivative  and  dubious  of  sciences, 
for  the  direct  intelligent  reading  of  experi- 
ence !  But  this  strain  of  subjectivity  is  not 
in  all  respects  an  evil ;  it  is  a  warm  purple 
dye.  When  a  way  of  thinking  is  deeply 
rooted  in  the  soil,  and  embodies  the  instincts 


THE  MORAL  BACKGROUND       33 

or  even  the  characteristic  errors  of  a  people, 
it  has  a  value  quite  independent  of  its  truth  ; 
it  constitutes  a  phase  of  human  life  and 
can  powerfully  affect  the  intellectual  drama 
in  which  it  figures.  It  is  a  value  of  this 
sort  that  attaches  to  modern  philosophy  in 
general,  and  very  particularly  to  the  Ameri- 
can thinkers  I  am  about  to  discuss.  There 
would  be  a  sort  of  irrelevance  and  unfair- 
ness in  measuring  them  by  the  standards  of 
pure  science  or  even  of  a  classic  sagacity, 
and  reproaching  them  for  not  having  reached 
perfect  consistency  or  fundamental  clearness. 
Men  of  intense  feeling — and  others  will 
hardly  count — are  not  mirrors  but  lights. 
If  pure  truth  happened  to  be  what  they 
passionately  desired,  they  would  seek  it 
single-mindedly,  and  in  matters  within  their 
competence  they  would  probably  find  it ; 
but  the  desire  for  pure  truth,  like  any 
other,  must  wait  to  be  satisfied  until  its 
organ  is  ripe  and  the  conditions  are  favour- 
able. The  nineteenth  century  was  not  a 
time  and  America  was  not  a  place  where  such 
an  achievement  could  be  expected.  There 
the  wisest  felt  themselves  to  be,  as  they 
were,  questioners  and  apostles  rather  than 


34       CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

serene  philosophers.  We  should  not  pay 
them  the  doubtful  compliment  of  attribut- 
ing to  them  merits  alien  to  their  tradition 
and  scope,  as  if  the  nobleness  they  actually 
possessed — their  conscience,  vigour,  timeli- 
ness, and  influence — were  not  enough. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE   ACADEMIC   ENVIRONMENT 

During  some  twenty-five  years — from  about 
1885  to  1910 — there  was  at  Harvard  College 
an  interesting  congregation  of  philosophers. 
Why  at  Harvard  in  particular  ?  So  long  as 
philosophy  is  the  free  pursuit  of  wisdom,  it 
arises  wherever  men  of  character  and  pene- 
tration, each  with  his  special  experience  or 
hobby,  look  about  them  in  this  world.  That 
philosophers  should  be  professors  is  an  acci- 
dent, and  almost  an  anomaly.  Free  reflec- 
tion about  everything  is  a  habit  to  be  imitated, 
but  not  a  subject  to  expound ;  and  an 
original  system,  if  the  philosopher  has  one, 
is  something  dark,  perilous,  untested,  and 
not  ripe  to  be  taught,  nor  is  there  much 
danger  that  any  one  will  learn  it.  The  genu- 
ine philosopher -^  as  Royce  liked  to  say, 
quoting  the  Upanishads — wanders  alone  like 

35 


36       CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

the  rhinoceros.  He  may  be  followed,  as  he 
may  have  been  anticipated  ;  and  he  may 
even  be  accompanied,  though  there  is  as 
much  danger  as  stimulus  to  him  in  flying 
with  a  flock.  In  his  disputations,  if  he  is 
drawn  into  them,  he  will  still  be  solilo- 
quising, and  meeting  not  the  arguments 
persuasive  to  others,  but  only  such  a  version 
of  them  as  his  own  thought  can  supply.  The 
value  of  his  questions  and  answers,  as  Socrates 
knew  so  well,  will  lie  wholly  in  the  monition 
of  the  argument  developing  within  him  and 
carrying  him  whithersoever  it  will,  like  a 
dream  or  like  a  god.  If  philosophers  must 
earn  their  living  and  not  beg  (which  some 
of  them  have  thought  more  consonant  with 
their  vocation),  it  would  be  safer  for  them 
to  polish  lenses  like  Spinoza,  or  to  sit  in  a 
black  skull-cap  and  white  beard  at  the  door 
of  some  unfrequented  museum,  selling  the 
catalogues  and  taking  in  the  umbrellas ; 
these  innocent  ways  of  earning  their  bread- 
card  in  the  future  republic  would  not  preju- 
dice their  meditations  and  would  keep  their 
eyes  fixed,  without  undue  affection,  on  a 
characteristic  bit  of  that  real  world  which 
it  is  their  business  to  understand.     Or  if. 


THE  ACADEMIC  ENVIRONMENT  37 

being  mild  and  bookish,  it  is  thought  they 
ought  to  be  teachers,  they  might  teach 
something  else  than  philosophy  ;  or  if  philo- 
sophy is  the  only  thing  they  are  competent 
to  teach,  it  might  at  least  not  be  their  own, 
but  some  classic  system  with  which,  and 
against  which,  mankind  is  already  inoculated 
— preferably  the  civilised  ethics  and  charm- 
ing myths  of  Plato  and  Aristotle,  which 
everybody  will  be  the  better  for  knowing 
and  few  the  worse  for  believing.  At  best, 
the  true  philosopher  can  fulfil  his  mission 
very  imperfectly,  which  is  to  pilot  himself, 
or  at  most  a  few  voluntary  companions  who 
may  find  themselves  in  the  same  boat.  It 
is  not  easy  for  him  to  shout,  or  address  a 
crowd ;  he  must  be  silent  for  long  seasons  ; 
for  he  is  watching  stars  that  move  slowly 
and  in  courses  that  it  is  possible  though 
difficult  to  foresee ;  and  he  is  crushing  all 
things  in  his  heart  as  in  a  winepress,  until 
his  life  and  their  secret  flow  out  together. 

The  tendency  to  gather  and  to  breed 
philosophers  in  universities  does  not  belong 
to  ages  of  free  and  humane  reflection  :  it  is 
scholastic  and  proper  to  the  Middle  Ages  and 
to  Germany.     And  the  reason  is  not  far  to 


38       CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

seek.  When  there  is  a  philosophical  ortho- 
doxy, and  speculation  is  expected  to  be  a 
reasoned  defence  of  some  funded  inspiration, 
it  becomes  itself  corporate  and  traditional, 
and  requires  centres  of  teaching,  endowment, 
and  propaganda.  Fundamental  questions 
have  been  settled  by  the  church,  the  govern- 
ment, or  the  Zeitgeist,  and  the  function  of 
the  professor,  himself  bred  in  that  school,  is 
to  transmit  its  lore  to  the  next  generation, 
with  such  original  touches  of  insight  or 
eloquence  as  he  may  command.  To  main- 
tain and  elucidate  such  a  tradition,  all  the 
schools  and  universities  of  Christendom  were 
originally  founded ;  and  if  philosophy  seemed 
sometimes  to  occupy  but  a  small  place  in 
them — as  for  instance  in  the  old-fashioned 
American  college — it  was  only  because  the 
entire  discipline  and  instruction  of  the  place 
were  permeated  with  a  particular  system  of 
faith  and  morals,  which  it  was  almost  super- 
fluous to  teach  in  the  abstract.  In  those 
universities  where  philosophical  controversy 
is  rife,  its  traditional  and  scholastic  character 
is  no  less  obvious  ;  it  lives  less  on  meditation 
than  on  debate,  and  turns  on  proofs,  objec- 
tions, paradoxes,  or  expedients  for  seeming 


THE  ACADEMIC  ENVIRONMENT  89 

to  re-establish  everything  that  had  come  to 
seem  clearly  false,  by  some  ingenious  change 
of  front  or  some  twist  of  dialectic.  Its 
subject-matter  is  not  so  much  what  is  known 
of  the  world,  as  what  often  very  ignorant 
philosophers  have  said  in  answer  to  one 
another ;  or  else,  when  the  age  is  out  of 
patience  with  scholasticism,  orthodoxy  may 
take  refuge  in  intuition,  and  for  fear  of  the 
letter  without  the  spirit,  may  excuse  itself 
from  considering  at  all  what  is  logical  or 
probable,  in  order  to  embrace  whatever 
seems  most  welcome  and  comforting.  The 
sweet  homilies  of  the  professors  then  become 
clerical,  genteel,  and  feminine. 

Harvard  College  had  been  founded  to 
rear  puritan  divines,  and  as  Calvinism  gradu- 
ally dissolved,  it  left  a  void  there  and  as  it 
were  a  mould,  which  a  philosophy  expressing 
the  same  instincts  in  a  world  intellectually 
transformed  could  flow  into  and  fill  almost 
without  knowing  it.  Corporate  bodies  are 
like  persons,  long  vaguely  swayed  by  early 
impressions  they  may  have  forgotten.  Even 
when  changes  come  over  the  spirit  of  their 
dream,  a  sense  of  the  mission  to  which  they 
were  first  dedicated  lingers  about  them,  and 


40       CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

may  revive,  like  the  antiquarian  and  poetic 
Catholicism  of  Oxford  in  the  nineteenth 
century.  In  academic  America  the  Platonic 
and  Catholic  traditions  had  never  been 
planted ;  it  was  only  the  Calvinistic  tradi- 
tion, when  revived  in  some  modern  disguise, 
that  could  stir  there  the  secret  cord  of 
reverence  and  enthusiasm.  Harvard  was 
the  seminary  and  academy  for  the  inner 
circle  of  Bostonians,  and  naturally  responded 
to  all  the  liberal  and  literary  movements  of 
which  Boston  was  the  centre.  In  religion 
it  became  first  unitarian  and  afterwards 
•  neutral ;  in  philosophy  it  might  long  have 
been  satisfied  with  what  other  New  England 
colleges  found  sufficient,  namely  such  lofty 
views  as  the  president,  usually  a  clergyman, 
could  introduce  into  his  baccalaureate  ser- 
mons, or  into  the  course  of  lectures  he  might 
give  for  seniors  on  the  evidences  of  Christi- 
anity or  on  the  theory  of  evolution.  Such 
philosophical  initiation  had  sufficed  for  the 
distinguished  literary  men  of  the  middle  of 
the  century,  and  even  for  so  deep  a  sage 
as  Emerson.  But  things  cannot  stand 
still,  and  Boston,  as  is  well  known,  is  not 
an  ordinary  place.     When  the   impulse   to 


THE  ACADEMIC  ENVIRONMENT  41 

domestic  literary  expression  seemed  to  be 
exhausted,  intellectual  ambition  took  other 
forms.  It  was  an  age  of  science,  of  philo- 
logy, of  historical  learning,  and  the  laurels 
of  Germany  would  not  let  Boston  sleep.  As 
it  had  a  great  public  library,  and  hoped  to 
have  a  great  art  museum,  might  it  not  have 
a  great  university  ?  Harvard  in  one  sense 
was  a  university  already,  in  that  the  college 
(although  there  was  only  one)  was  surrounded 
by  a  group  of  professional  schools,  notably 
those  of  law  and  medicine,  in  which  studies 
requisite  for  the  service  of  the  community, 
and  leading  potentially  to  brilliant  careers, 
were  carried  on  with  conspicuous  success. 
The  number  of  these  professional  schools 
might  have  been  enlarged,  as  has  been  actu- 
ally done  later,  until  training  in  all  the 
professions  had  been  provided.  But  it  hap- 
pens that  the  descriptive  sciences,  languages, 
mathematics,  and  philosophy  are  not  studies 
useful  for  any  profession,  except  that  of 
teaching  these  very  subjects  over  again ; 
and  there  was  no  practical  way  of  introducing 
them  into  the  Harvard  system  except  to 
graft  them  upon  the  curriculum  of  the  college; 
otherwise  neither  money  nor  students  could 


42       CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

have  been  found  for  so  much  ornamental 
learning. 

This  circumstance,  external  and  irrele- 
vant as  it  may  seem,  I  think  had  a  great 
influence  over  the  temper  and  quality  of  the 
Harvard  philosophers ;  for  it  mingled  re- 
sponsibility for  the  education  of  youth,  and 
much  labour  in  it,  with  their  pure  speculation. 
Teaching  is  a  delightful  paternal  art,  and 
especially  teaching  intelligent  and  warm- 
hearted youngsters,  as  most  American  col- 
legians are  ;  but  it  is  an  art  like  acting,  where 
the  performance,  often  rehearsed,  must  be 
adapted  to  an  audience  hearing  it  only  once. 
The  speaker  must  make  concessions  to  their 
impatience,  their  taste,  their  capacity,  their 
prejudices,  their  ultimate  good ;  he  must 
neither  bore  nor  perplex  nor  demoralise  them. 
His  thoughts  must  be  such  as  can  flow  daily, 
and  be  set  down  in  notes  ;  they  must  come 
when  the  bell  rings  and  stop  appropriately 
when  the  bell  rings  a  second  time.  The  best 
that  is  in  him,  as  Mephistopheles  says  in 
Faust,  he  dare  not  tell  them  ;  and  as  the 
substance  of  this  possession  is  spiritual,  to 
withhold  is  often  to  lose  it.  For  it  is  not 
merely  a  matter  of  fearing  not  to  be  under- 


THE  ACADEMIC  ENVIRONMENT    43 

stood,  or  giving  offence  ;  in  the  presence  of 
a  hundred  youthful  upturned  faces  a  man 
cannot,  without  diffidence,  speak  in  his  own 
person,  of  his  own  thoughts ;  he  needs 
support,  in  order  to  exert  influence  with  a 
good  conscience  ;  unless  he  feels  that  he  is 
the  vehicle  of  a  massive  tradition,  he  will 
become  bitter,  or  flippant,  or  aggressive  ;  if 
he  is  to  teach  with  good  grace  and  modesty 
and  authority,  it  must  not  be  he  that  speaks, 
but  science  or  humanity  that  is  speaking  in 
him. 

Now  the  state  of  Harvard  College,  and  of 
American  education  generally,  at  the  time  to 
which  I  refer,  had  this  remarkable  effect  on 
the  philosophers  there  :  it  made  their  sense 
of  social  responsibility  acute,  because  they 
were  consciously  teaching  and  guiding  the 
community,  as  if  they  had  been  clergy- 
men ;  and  it  made  no  less  acute  their  moral 
loneliness,  isolation,  and  forced  self-reliance, 
because  they  were  like  clergymen  without  a 
church,  and  not  only  had  no  common  philo- 
sophic doctrine  to  transmit,  but  were  ex- 
pected not  to  have  one.  They  were  invited 
to  be  at  once  genuine  philosophers  and 
popular  professors  ;   and  the  degree  to  which 


44        CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

some  of  them  managed  to  unite  these  con- 
traries is  remarkable,  especially  if  we  con- 
sider the  character  of  the  academic  public 
they  had  to  serve  and  to  please.  While  the 
sentiments  of  most  Americans  in  politics  and 
morals,  if  a  little  vague,  are  very  conservative, 
their  democratic  instincts,  and  the  force  of 
circumstances,  have  produced  a  system  of 
education  which  anticipates  all  that  the  most 
extreme  revolution  could  bring  about ;  and 
while  no  one  dreams  of  forcibly  suppressing 
private  property,  religion,  or  the  family, 
American  education  ignores  these  things,  and 
proceeds  as  much  as  possible  as  if  they  did 
not  exist.  The  child  passes  very  young  into 
a  free  school,  established  and  managed  by 
the  municipal  authorities  ;  the  teachers,  even 
for  the  older  boys,  are  chiefly  unmarried 
women,  sensitive,  faithful,  and  feeble  ;  their 
influence  helps  to  establish  that  separation 
which  is  so  characteristic  of  America  between 
things  intellectual,  which  remain  wrapped  in 
a  feminine  veil  and,  as  it  were,  under  glass, 
and  the  rough  business  and  passions  of  life. 
The  lessons  are  ambitious  in  range,  but  are 
made  as  easy,  as  interesting,  and  as  optional 
as   possible  ;    the  stress  is  divided  between 


THE  ACADEMIC  ENVIRONMENT  45 

what  the  child  Hkes  now  and  what  he  is  going 
to  need  in  his  trade  or  profession.  The  young 
people  are  sympathetically  encouraged  to 
instruct  themselves  and  to  educate  one 
another.  They  romp  and  make  fun  like 
young  monkeys,  they  flirt  and  have  their 
private  "  brain-storms  "  like  little  supermen 
and  superwomen.  They  are  tremendously 
in  earnest  about  their  college  intrigues  and 
intercollegiate  athletic  wars.  They  are  fond, 
often  compassionately  fond,  of  their  parents, 
and  home  is  all  the  more  sacred  to  them  in 
that  they  are  seldom  there.  They  enjoy  a 
surprising  independence  in  habits,  friendships, 
and  opinions.  Brothers  and  sisters  often 
choose  different  religions.  The  street,  the 
school,  the  young  people's  club,  the  magazine, 
the  popular  novel,  furnish  their  mental 
pabulum.  The  force  of  example  and  of 
passing  custom  is  all  the  more  irresistible  in 
this  absence  of  authority  and  tradition  ;  for 
this  sort  of  independence  rather  diminishes 
the  power  of  being  original,  by  supplying  a 
slenderer  basis  and  a  thinner  soil  from  which 
originality  might  spring.  Uniformity  is  estab- 
lished spontaneously  without  discipline,  as 
in  the  popular  speech  and  ethics  of  every 


46       CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

nation.  Against  this  tendency  to  uniformity 
the  efforts  of  a  cultivated  minority  to  main- 
tain a  certain  distinction  and  infuse  it  into 
their  hves  and  minds  are  not  very  successful. 
They  have  secondary  schools  for  their  boys 
in  which  the  teachers  are  men,  and  even 
boarding-schools  in  the  country,  more  or  less 
Gothic  in  aspect  and  English  in  regimen  ; 
there  are  other  semi-foreign  institutions  and 
circles,  Catholic  or  Jewish,  in  which  religion 
is  the  dominant  consideration.  There  is  also 
the  society  of  the  very  rich,  with  cosmo- 
politan leanings  and  a  vivacious  interest  in 
artistic  undertakings  and  personalities.  But 
all  these  distinctions,  important  as  they  may 
seem  to  those  who  cultivate  them,  are  a  mere 
shimmer  and  ripple  on  the  surface  of  American 
life  ;  and  for  an  observer  who  sees  things  in 
perspective  they  almost  disappear.  By  a 
merciful  dispensation  of  nature,  the  pupils 
of  these  choice  establishments,  the  moment 
they  plunge  into  business  or  politics,  acquire 
the  protective  colouring  of  their  environment 
and  become  indistinguishable  from  the  generic 
American.  Their  native  disposition  was  after 
all  the  national  one,  their  attempted  special 
education  was  perfunctory,  and  the  influence 


THE  ACADEMIC  ENVIRONMENT  47 

of  their  public  activities  and  surroundings  is 
overwhelming.  American  life  is  a  powerful 
solvent.  As  it  stamps  the  immigrant,  almost 
before  he  can  speak  English,  with  an  un- 
mistakable muscular  tension,  cheery  self- 
confidence  and  habitual  challenge  in  the  voice 
and  eyes,  so  it  seems  to  neutralise  every  in- 
tellectual element,  however  tough  and  alien  it 
may  be,  and  to  fuse  it  in  the  native  good-will, 
complacency,  thoughtlessness,  and  optimism. 
Consider,  for  instance,  the  American 
Catholics,  of  whom  there  are  nominally  many 
millions,  and  who  often  seem  to  retain  their 
ancestral  faith  sincerely  and  affectionately. 
This  faith  took  shape  during  the  decline  of 
the  Roman  empire  ;  it  is  full  of  large  dis- 
illusions about  this  world  and  minute  illusions 
about  the  other.  It  is  ancient,  metaphysical, 
poetic,  elaborate,  ascetic,  autocratic,  and 
intolerant.  It  confronts  the  boastful  natural 
man,  such  as  the  American  is,  with  a  thou- 
sand denials  and  menaces.  Everything  in 
American  life  is  at  the  antipodes  to  such 
a  system.  Yet  the  American  Catholic  is 
entirely  at  peace.  His  tone  in  everything, 
even  in  religion,  is  cheerfully  American.  It  is 
wonderful  how  silently,  amicably,  and  happily 


48        CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

he  lives  in  a  community  whose  spirit  is  pro- 
foundly hostile  to  that  of  his  religion.  He 
seems  to  take  stock  in  his  church  as  he  might 
in  a  gold  mine — sure  it  is  a  grand,  dazzling, 
unique  thing ;  and  perhaps  he  masks,  even 
to  himself,  his  purely  imaginative  ardour 
about  it,  with  the  pretext  that  it  is  sure  to 
make  his  fortune  both  in  this  life  and  in  the 
next.  His  church,  he  will  tell  you,  is  a  first- 
rate  church  to  belong  to  ;  the  priests  are  fine 
fellows,  like  the  policemen  ;  the  Sisters  are 
dear  noble  women,  like  his  own  sisters  ;  his 
parish  is  flourishing,  and  always  rebuilding 
its  church  and  founding  new  schools,  orphan 
asylums,  sodalities,  confraternities,  perpetual 
adoration  societies.  No  parish  can  raise  so 
much  money  for  any  object,  or  if  there  are 
temporary  troubles,  the  fact  still  remains  that 
America  has  three  Cardinals  and  that  the 
Catholic  religion  is  the  biggest  religion  on 
earth.  Attachment  to  his  church  in  such  a 
temper  brings  him  into  no  serious  conflict 
with  his  Protestant  neighbours.  They  live 
and  meet  on  common  ground.  Their  re- 
spective religions  pass  among  them  for  family 
matters,  private  and  sacred,  with  no  political 
implications. 


THE  ACADEMIC  ENVIRONMENT  49 

Such  was  the  education  and  such  the  atmo- 
sphere of  intellectual  innocence  which  pre- 
vailed in  the  public — mostly  undergraduates 
— to  which  the  Harvard  philosophers  adapted 
their  teaching  and  to  some  extent  their 
philosophy.  The  students  were  intelligent, 
ambitious,  remarkably  able  to  "do  things  "  ; 
they  were  keen  about  the  matters  that  had 
already  entered  into  their  lives,  and  invincibly 
happy  in  their  ignorance  of  everything  else. 
A  gentle  contempt  for  the  past  permeated 
their  judgements.  They  were  not  accustomed 
to  the  notion  of  authority,  nor  aware  that 
it  might  have  legitimate  grounds ;  they 
instinctively  disbelieved  in  the  superiority  of 
what  was  out  of  reach.  About  high  questions 
of  politics  and  religion  their  minds  were  open 
but  vague  ;  they  seemed  not  to  think  them 
of  practical  importance ;  they  acquiesced 
in  people  having  any  views  they  liked  on 
such  subjects  ;  the  fluent  and  fervid  enthusi- 
asms so  common  among  European  students, 
prophesying  about  politics,  philosophy,  and 
art,  were  entirely  unknown  among  them. 
Instead  they  had  absorbing  local  traditions 
of  their  own,  athletic  and  social,  and  their 
college    life    was    their    true    education,    an 

E 


50       CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

education  in  friendship,  co-operation,  and 
freedom.  In  the  eighteen-eighties  a  good 
deal  of  old-fashioned  shabbiness  and  jollity 
lingered  about  Harvard.  Boston  and  Cam- 
bridge in  those  days  resembled  in  some  ways 
the  London  of  Dickens  :  the  same  dismal 
wealth,  the  same  speechifying,  the  same 
anxious  respectability,  the  same  sordid  back 
streets,  with  their  air  of  shiftlessness  and 
decay,  the  same  odd  figures  and  loud  humour, 
and,  to  add  a  touch  of  horror,  the  monstrous 
suspicion  that  some  of  the  inhabitants  might 
be  secretly  wicked.  Life,  for  the  under- 
graduates, was  full  of  droll  incidents  and 
broad  farce  ;  it  drifted  good-naturedly  from 
one  commonplace  thing  to  another.  Stand- 
ing packed  in  the  tinkling  horse-car,  their 
coat-collars  above  their  ears  and  their  feet 
deep  in  the  winter  straw,  they  jogged  in  a 
long  half-hour  to  Boston,  there  to  enjoy  the 
delights  of  female  society,  the  theatre,  or  a 
good  dinner.  And  in  the  summer  days,  for 
Class  Day  and  Commencement,  feminine  and 
elderly  Boston  would  return  the  visit,  led  by 
the  governor  of  Massachusetts  in  his  hired 
carriage-and-four,  and  by  the  local  orators 
and  poets,   brimming  with  jokes  and  con- 


THE  ACADEMIC  ENVIRONMENT  51 

ventional  sentiments,  and  eager  not  so  much 
to  speed  the  youngsters  on  their  career,  as 
to  air  their  own  wit,  and  warm  their  hearts 
with  punch  and  with  collective  memories  of 
youth.  It  was  an  idyllic,  haphazard,  humor- 
istic  existence,  without  fine  imagination, 
without  any  familiar  infusion  of  scholarship, 
without  articulate  religion :  a  flutter  of 
intelligence  in  a  void,  flying  into  trivial  play, 
in  order  to  drop  back,  as  soon  as  college  days 
were  over,  into  the  drudgery  of  affairs. 
There  was  the  love  of  beauty,  but  without 
the  sight  of  it ;  for  the  bits  of  pleasant  land- 
scape or  the  works  of  art  which  might  break 
the  ugliness  of  the  foreground  were  a  sort  of 
aesthetic  miscellany,  enjoyed  as  one  enjoys  a 
museum  ;  there  was  nothing  in  which  the 
spirit  of  beauty  was  deeply  interfused,  charged 
with  passion  and  discipline  and  intricate 
familiar  associations  with  delicate  and  noble 
things.  Of  course,  the  sky  is  above  every 
country,  and  New  England  had  brilliant  sun- 
sets and  deep  snows,  and  sea  and  woods  were 
at  hand  for  the  holidays  ;  and  it  was  notable 
how  much  even  what  a  homely  art  or  accident 
might  have  done  for  the  towns  was  studied 
and  admired.     Old  corners  were  pointed  out 


52       CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

where  the  dingy  red  brick  had  lost  its  rigidity 
and  taken  on  a  mossy  tinge,  and  where  here 
and  there  a  pane  of  glass,  surviving  all  tenants 
and  housemaids,  had  turned  violet  in  the 
sunlight  of  a  hundred  years ;  and  most 
precious  of  all  were  the  high  thin  elms, 
spreading  aloft,  looped  and  drooping  over 
old  streets  and  commons.  And  yet  it  seemed 
somehow  as  if  the  sentiment  lavished  on  these 
things  had  been  intended  by  nature  for  some- 
thing else,  for  something  more  important. 
Not  only  had  the  mind  of  the  nation  been 
originally  somewhat  chilled  and  impoverished 
by  Protestantism,  by  migration  to  a  new 
world,  by  absorption  in  material  tasks,  but 
what  fine  sensibility  lingered  in  an  older 
generation  was  not  easily  transmitted  to  the 
young.  The  young  had  their  own  ways, 
which  on  principle  were  to  be  fostered  and 
respected  ;  and  one  of  their  instincts  was  to 
associate  only  with  those  of  their  own  age  and 
calibre.  The  young  were  simply  young,  and 
the  old  simply  old,  as  among  peasants. 
Teachers  and  pupils  seemed  animals  of 
different  species,  useful  and  well-disposed 
towards  each  other,  like  a  cow  and  a  milkmaid ; 
periodic   contributions    could   pass   between 


THE  ACADEMIC  ENVIRONMENT  53 

them,  but  not  conversation.  This  circum- 
stance shows  how  much  American  inteUigence 
is  absorbed  in  what  is  not  intellectual.  Their 
tasks  and  their  pleasures  divide  people  of 
different  ages  ;  what  can  unite  them  is  ideas, 
impersonal  interests,  liberal  arts.  Without 
these  they  cannot  forget  their  mutual 
inferiority. 

Certainly  those  four  college  years,  judged 
by  any  external  standard,  were  trivial  and 
wasted ;  but  Americans,  although  so  practical 
in  their  adult  masculine  undertakings,  are 
slow  to  take  umbrage  at  the  elaborate  play- 
fulness of  their  wives  and  children.  With 
the  touching  humility  of  strength,  they  seem 
to  say  to  themselves,  "  Let  the  dear  creatures 
have  their  fling,  and  be  happy  :  what  else 
are  we  old  fellows  slaving  for  ?  "  And 
certainly  the  joy  of  life  is  the  crown  of  it ; 
but  have  American  ladies  and  collegians 
achieved  the  joy  of  life  ?  Is  that  the 
summit  ? 

William  James  had  a  theory  that  if  some 
scientific  widower,  with  a  child  about  to  learn 
to  walk,  could  be  persuaded  to  allow  the 
child's  feet  to  be  blistered,  it  would  turn  out, 
when  the  blisters  were  healed,  that  the  child 


54      CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

would  walk  as  well  as  if  he  had  practised  and 
had  many  a  fall ;  because  the  machinery 
necessary  for  walking  would  have  matured  in 
him  automatically,  just  as  the  machinery  for 
breathing  does  in  the  womb.  The  case  of 
the  old-fashioned  American  college  may  serve 
to  support  this  theory.  It  blistered  young 
men's  heads  for  four  years  and  prevented 
them  from  practising  anything  useful ;  yet 
at  the  end  they  were  found  able  to  do  most 
things  as  well,  or  twice  as  well,  as  their  con- 
temporaries who  had  been  all  that  time 
apprenticed  and  chained  to  a  desk.  Man- 
hood and  sagacity  ripen  of  themselves  ;  it 
suffices  not  to  repress  or  distort  them.  The 
college  liberated  the  young  man  from  the 
pursuit  of  money,  from  hypocrisy,  from  the 
control  of  women.  He  could  grow  for  a  time 
according  to  his  nature,  and  if  this  growth 
was  not  guided  by  much  superior  wisdom  or 
deep  study,  it  was  not  warped  by  any  serious 
perversion  ;  and  if  the  intellectual  world  did 
not  permanently  entice  him,  are  we  so  sure 
that  in  philosophy,  for  instance,  it  had  any- 
thing to  offer  that  was  very  solid  in  itself, 
or  humanly  very  important  ?  At  least  he 
learned  that  such  things  existed,  and  gathered 


THE  ACADEMIC  ENVIRONMENT  55 

a  shrewd  notion  of  what  they  could  do  for  a 
man,  and  what  they  might  make  of  him. 

When  Harvard  was  reformed — and  I 
beheve  all  the  colleges  are  reformed  now — 
the  immediate  object  was  not  to  refine  col- 
lege life  or  render  it  more  scholarly,  though 
for  certain  circles  this  was  accomplished 
incidentally  ;  the  object  was  rather  to  ex- 
tend the  scope  of  instruction,  and  make  it 
more  advanced.  It  is  natural  that  every 
great  city,  the  capital  of  any  nation  or 
region,  should  wish  to  possess  a  university 
in  the  literal  sense  of  the  word — an  encyclo- 
paedic institute,  or  group  of  institutes,  to 
teach  and  foster  all  the  professions,  all  the 
arts,  and  all  the  sciences.  Such  a  university 
need  have  nothing  to  do  with  education, 
with  the  transmission  of  a  particular  moral 
and  intellectual  tradition.  Education  might 
be  courteously  presupposed.  The  teacher 
would  not  be  a  man  with  his  hand  on  a  lad's 
shoulder,  his  son  or  young  brother ;  he 
would  be  an  expert  in  some  science,  deliver- 
ing lectures  for  public  instruction,  while 
perhaps  privately  carrying  on  investigations 
with  the  aid  of  a  few  disciples  whom  he 
would  be  training  in  his  specialty.      There 


56       CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

would  be  no  reason  why  either  the  professors 
or  the  auditors  in  such  an  institution  should 
live  together  or  should  have  much  in  common 
in  religion,  morals,  or  breeding,  or  should 
even  speak  the  same  language.  On  the 
contrary,  if  only  each  was  competent  in  his 
way,  the  more  miscellaneous  their  types 
the  more  perfect  would  these  render  their 
universitas.  The  public  addressed,  also, 
need  not  be  restricted,  any  more  than  the 
public  at  a  church  or  a  theatre  or  a  town 
library,  by  any  requirements  as  to  age,  sex, 
race,  or  attainments.  They  would  come  on 
their  own  responsibility,  to  pursue  what 
studies  they  chose,  and  so  long  as  they 
found  them  profitable.  Nor  need  there  be 
any  limit  as  to  the  subjects  broached,  or  any 
division  of  them  into  faculties  or  depart- 
ments, except  perhaps  for  convenience  in 
administration.  One  of  the  functions  of 
professors  would  be  to  invent  new  subjects, 
because  this  world  is  so  complex,  and  the 
play  of  the  human  mind  upon  it  is  so  ex- 
ternal and  iridescent,  that,  as  men's  interests 
and  attitude  vary,  fresh  unities  and  fresh 
aspects  are  always  discernible  in  everything. 
As    Harvard    University    developed,    all 


THE  ACADEMIC  ENVIRONMENT  57 

these  characteristics  appeared  in  it  in  a 
more  or  less  marked  degree  ;  but  the  trans- 
formation was  never  complete.  The  centre 
of  it  remained  a  college,  with  its  local  con- 
stituency and  rooted  traditions,  and  its 
thousand  or  two  thousand  undergraduates 
needing  to  be  educated.  Experts  in  every 
science  and  money  to  pay  them  were  not 
at  hand,  and  the  foreign  talent  that  could 
be  attracted  did  not  always  prove  morally 
or  socially  digestible.  The  browsing  under- 
graduate could  simply  range  with  a  looser 
tether,  and  he  was  reinforced  by  a  fringe 
of  graduates  who  had  not  yet  had  enough, 
or  who  were  attracted  from  other  colleges. 
These  graduates  came  to  form  a  sort  of 
normal  school  for  future  professors,  stamped 
as  in  Germany  with  a  Ph.D. ;  and  the 
teachers  in  each  subject  became  a  committee 
charged  with  something  of  the  functions  of 
a  registry  office,  to  find  places  for  their 
nurslings.  The  university  could  thus  acquire 
a  national  and  even  an  international  func- 
tion, drawing  in  distinguished  talent  and 
youthful  ambition  from  everywhere,  and 
sending  forth  ^in  various  directions  its 
apostles  of  light  and  learning. 


58        CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

I  think  it  is  intelligible  that  in  such  a 
place  and  at  such  a  crisis  philosophy  should 
have  played  a  conspicuous  part,  and  also 
that  it  should  have  had  an  ambiguous 
character.  There  had  to  be,  explicit  or  im- 
plicit, a  philosophy  for  the  college.  A  place 
where  all  polite  Boston  has  been  educated 
for  centuries  cannot  bely  its  moral  principles 
and  religious  questionings  ;  it  must  transmit 
its  austere,  faithful,  reforming  spirit.  But 
at  the  same  time  there  had  now  to  be  a 
philosophy  for  the  university.  A  chief  part 
of  that  traditional  faith  was  the  faith  in 
freedom,  in  inquiry;  and  it  was  necessary, 
in  the  very  interests  of  the  traditional 
philosophy,  to  take  account  of  all  that  was 
being  said  in  the  world,  and  to  incorporate 
the  spirit  of  the  times  in  the  spirit  of  the 
fathers.  Accordingly,  no  single  abstract 
opinion  was  particularly  tabooed  at  Harvard ; 
granted  industry,  sobriety,  and  some  sem- 
blance of  theism,  no  professor  was  expected 
to  agree  with  any  other.  I  believe  the 
authorities  would  have  been  well  pleased, 
for  the  sake  of  completeness,  to  have  added 
a  Buddhist,  a  Moslem,  and  a  Catholic 
scholastic    to    the    philosophical    faculty,    if 


THE  ACADEMIC  ENVIRONMENT  59 

only  suitable  sages  could  have  been  found, 
house-trained,  as  it  were,  and  able  to  keep 
pace  with  the  academic  machine  and  to 
attract  a  sufficient  number  of  pupils.  But 
this  official  freedom  was  not  true  freedom, 
there  was  no  happiness  in  it.  A  slight 
smell  of  brimstone  lingered  in  the  air.  You 
might  think  what  you  liked,  but  you  must 
consecrate  your  belief  or  your  unbelief  to 
the  common  task  of  encouraging  everybody 
and  helping  everything  on.  You  might 
almost  be  an  atheist,  if  you  were  troubled 
enough  about  it.  The  atmosphere  was  not 
that  of  intelligence  nor  of  science,  it  was 
that  of  duty. 

In  the  academic  life  and  methods  of  the 
university  there  was  the  same  incomplete 
transformation.  The  teaching  required  was 
for  the  most  part  college  teaching,  in  college 
subjects,  such  as  might  well  have  been 
entrusted  to  tutors  ;  but  it  was  given  by 
professors  in  the  form  of  lectures,  excessive 
in  number  and  too  often  repeated ;  and 
they  were  listened  to  by  absent-minded 
youths,  ill-grounded  in  the  humanities,  and 
not  keenly  ali^ve  to  intellectual  interests. 
The  graduates  (like  the  young  ladies)  were 


60       CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

more  attentive  and  anxious  not  to  miss 
anything,  but  they  were  no  better  prepared 
and  often  less  intelHgent ;  and  there  is  no 
dunce  hke  a  mature  dunce.  Accordingly, 
the  professor  of  philosophy  had  to  swim 
against  rather  a  powerful  current.  Some- 
times he  succumbed  to  the  reality;  and  if, 
for  instance,  he  happened  to  mention  Dar- 
win, and  felt  a  blank  before  him,  he  would 
add  in  a  parenthesis,  "  Darwin,  Charles, 
author  of  the  Origin  of  Species,  1859  ;  epoch- 
making  work."  At  other  times  he  might 
lose  himself  altogether  in  the  ideal  and 
imagine  that  he  was  publishing  immortal 
thoughts  to  the  true  university,  to  the  world 
at  large,  and  was  feeling  an  exhilarating 
contact  with  masses  of  mankind,  themselves 
quickened  by  his  message.  He  might  see 
in  his  mind's  eye  rows  of  learned  men  and 
women  before  him,  familiar  with  every 
doubt,  hardened  to  every  conflict  of  opinion, 
ready  for  any  revolution,  whose  minds  no- 
thing he  could  say  could  possibly  shock,  or 
disintegrate  any  further  ;  on  the  contrary, 
the  naked  truth,  which  is  gentle  in  its 
austerity,  might  come  to  them  as  a  blessed 
deliverance,    and    he    might    fancy    himself 


THE  ACADEMIC  ENVIRONMENT  61 

for  a  moment  a  sort  of  hero  from  the  realms 
of  Hght  descending  into  the  nether  regions 
and  throwing  a  sop  of  reason  into  the  jaws 
of  snarKng  prejudice  and  frantic  error.  Or 
if  the  class  was  small,  and  only  two  or  three 
were  gathered  together,  he  might  imagine 
instead  that  he  was  sowing  seeds  of  wisdom, 
warmed  by  affection,  in  the  minds  of  genuine 
disciples,  future  tabernacles  of  the  truth. 
It  is  possible  that  if  the  reality  had  corre- 
sponded more  nearly  with  these  dreams,  and 
Harvard  had  actually  been  an  adult  univer- 
sity, philosophers  there  might  have  distilled 
their  doctrines  into  a  greater  purity.  As 
it  was,  Harvard  philosophy  had  an  opposite 
merit  :  it  represented  faithfully  the  com- 
plex inspiration  of  the  place  and  hour.  As 
the  university  was  a  local  puritan  college 
opening  its  windows  to  the  scientific  world, 
so  at  least  the  two  most  gifted  of  its  philo- 
sophers were  men  of  intense  feeling,  religious 
and  romantic,  but  attentive  to  the  facts  of 
nature  and  the  currents  of  worldly  opinion ; 
and  each  of  them  felt  himself  bound  by  two 
different  responsibilities,  that  of  describing 
things  as  they  are,  and  that  of  finding  them 
propitious   to   certain   preconceived    human 


62        CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

desires.  And  while  they  shared  this  double 
allegiance,  they  differed  very  much  in  temper, 
education,  and  taste.  William  James  was 
what  is  called  an  empiricist,  Josiah  Royce  an 
idealist ;  they  were  excellent  friends  and 
greatly  influenced  each  other,  and  the  very 
diversity  between  them  rendered  their  con- 
junction typical  of  the  state  of  philosophy  in 
England  and  America,  divided  between  the 
old  British  and  the  German  schools.  As 
if  all  this  intellectual  complication  had  not 
been  enough,  they  were  obliged  to  divide 
their  energies  externally,  giving  to  their 
daily  tasks  as  professors  and  pedagogues 
what  duty  demanded,  and  only  the  remainder 
to  scholarship,  reflection,  and  literary  work. 
Even  this  distracting  circumstance,  however, 
had  its  compensations.  College  work  was  a 
human  bond,  a  common  practical  interest ; 
it  helped  to  keep  up  that  circulation  of  the 
blood  which  made  the  whole  Harvard  school 
of  philosophy  a  vital  unit,  and  co-operative 
in  its  freedom.  There  was  a  general  momen- 
tum in  it,  half  institutional,  half  moral,  a 
single  troubled,  noble,  exciting  life.  Every 
one  was  labouring  with  the  contradiction 
he  felt  in  things,  and  perhaps  in  himself; 


THE  ACADEMIC  ENVIRONMENT  63 

all  were  determined  to  find  some  honest 
way  out  of  it,  or  at  least  to  bear  it  bravely. 
It  was  a  fresh  morning  in  the  life  of  reason, 
cloudy  but  brightening. 


CHAPTER  III 

WILLIAM   JAMES 

William  James  enjoyed  in  his  youth  what 
are  called  advantages  :  he  lived  among 
cultivated  people,  travelled,  had  teachers 
of  various  nationalities.  His  father  was 
one  of  those  somewhat  obscure  sages  whom 
early  America  produced  :  mystics  of  inde- 
pendent mind,  hermits  in  the  desert  of  busi- 
ness, and  heretics  in  the  churches.  They 
were  intense  individualists,  full  of  venera- 
tion for  the  free  souls  of  their  children, 
and  convinced  that  every  one  should  paddle 
his  own  canoe,  especially  on  the  high  seas. 
William  James  accordingly  enjoyed  a  stimu- 
lating if  slightly  irregular  education  :  he 
never  acquired  that  reposeful  mastery  of 
particular  authors  and  those  safe  ways  of 
feeling  and  judging  which  are  fostered  in 
great    schools    and   universities.     In    conse- 

64 


WILLIAM  JAMES  65 

quence  he  showed  an  almost  physical  horror 
of  club  sentiment  and  of  the  stifling  atmo- 
sphere of  all  officialdom.  He  had  a  knack 
for  drawing,  and  rather  the  temperament 
of  the  artist ;  but  the  unlovely  secrets  of 
nature  and  the  troubles  of  man  preoccupied 
him,  and  he  chose  medicine  for  his  profession. 
Instead  of  practising,  however,  he  turned 
to  teaching  physiology,  and  from  that  passed 
gradually  to  psychology  and  philosophy. 

In  his  earlier  years  he  retained  some 
traces  of  polyglot  student  days  at  Paris, 
Bonn,  Vienna,  or  Geneva  ;  he  slipped  some- 
times into  foreign  phrases,  uttered  in  their 
full  vernacular  ;  and  there  was  an  occasional 
afterglow  of  Bohemia  about  him,  in  the 
bright  stripe  of  a  shirt  or  the  exuberance 
of  a  tie.  On  points  of  art  or  medicine  he 
retained  a  professional  touch  and  an  un- 
conscious ease  which  he  hardly  acquired  in 
metaphysics.  I  suspect  he  had  heartily 
admired  some  of  his  masters  in  those  other 
subjects,  but  had  never  seen  a  philosopher 
whom  he  would  have  cared  to  resemble.  Of 
course  there  was  nothing  of  the  artist  in 
William  James,  as  the  artist  is  sometimes 
conceived  in  England,  nothing  of  the  aesthete, 

F 


66       CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

nothing  affected  or  limp.  In  person  he  was 
short  rather  than  tall,  erect,  brisk,  bearded, 
intensely  masculine.  While  he  shone  in 
expression  and  would  have  wished  his  style 
to  be  noble  if  it  could  also  be  strong,  he 
preferred  in  the  end  to  be  sjpontaneous,  and 
to  leave  it  at  that ;  he  tolerated  slang  in 
himself  rather  than  primness.  The  rough, 
homely,  picturesque  phrase,  whatever  was 
graphic  and  racy,  recommended  itself  to 
him  ;  and  his  conversation  outdid  his  writing 
in  this  respect.  He  believed  in  improvisa- 
tion, even  in  thought ;  his  lectures  were 
not  minutely  prepared.  Know  your  subject 
thoroughly,  he  used  to  say,  and  trust  to 
luck  for  the  rest.  There  was  a  deep  sense 
of  insecurity  in  him,  a  mixture  of  humility 
with  romanticism  :  we  were  likely  to  be 
more  or  less  wrong  anyhow,  but  we  might 
be  wholly  sincere.  One  moment  should 
respect  the  insight  of  another,  without  try- 
ing to  establish  too  regimental  a  uniformity. 
If  you  corrected  yourself  tartly,  how  could 
you  know  that  the  correction  was  not  the 
worse  mistake  ?  All  our  opinions  were  born 
free  and  equal,  all  children  of  the  Lord,  and 
if  they  were  not  consistent  that  was  the  Lord's 


WILLIAM  JAMES  67 

business,  not  theirs.  In  reality,  James  was 
consistent  enough,  as  even  Emerson  (more 
extreme  in  this  sort  of  irresponsibihty)  was 
too.  Inspiration  has  its  Umits,  sometimes 
very  narrow  ones.  But  James  was  not 
consecutive,  not  insistent ;  he  turned  to  a 
subject  afresh,  without  egotism  or  pedantry  ; 
he  dropped  his  old  points,  sometimes  very 
good  ones ;  and  he  modestly  looked  for 
light  from  others,  who  had  less  light  than 
himself. 

His  excursions  into  philosophy  were  ac- 
cordingly in  the  nature  of  raids,  and  it  is 
easy  for  those  who  are  attracted  by  one  part 
of  his  work  to  ignore  other  parts,  in  them- 
selves perhaps  more  valuable.  I  think  that 
in  fact  his  popularity  does  not  rest  on  his 
best  achievements.  His  popularity  rests  on 
three  somewhat  incidental  books,  The  Will 
to  Believe,  Pragmatism,  and  The  Varieties 
of  Religious  Experience,  whereas,  as  it  seems 
to  me,  his  best  achievement  is  his  Principles 
of  Psychology,  In  this  book  he  surveys,  in 
a  way  which  for  him  is  very  systematic,  a 
subject  made  to  his  hand.  In  its  ostensible 
outlook  it  is  a  ^reatise  like  any  other,  but 
what  distinguishes  it  is  the  author's  gift  for 


68        CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

evoking  vividly  the  very  life  of  the  mind. 
This  is  a  work  of  imagination ;  and  the 
subject  as  he  conceived  it,  which  is  the  flux 
of  immediate  experience  in  men  in  general, 
requires  imagination  to  read  it  at  all.  It 
is  a  literary  subject,  like  autobiography  or 
psychological  fiction,  and  can  be  treated 
only  poetically  ;  and  in  this  sense  Shake- 
speare is  a  better  psychologist  than  Locke 
or  Kant.  Yet  this  gift  of  imagination  is 
not  merely  literary ;  it  is  not  useless  in 
divining  the  truths  of  science,  and  it  is 
invaluable  in  throwing  off  prejudice  and 
scientific  shams.  The  fresh  imagination  and 
vitality  of  William  James  led  him  to  break 
through  many  a  false  convention.  He  saw 
that  experience,  as  we  endure  it,  is  not  a 
mosaic  of  distinct  sensations,  nor  the  ex- 
pression of  separate  hostile  faculties,  such 
as  reason  and  the  passions,  or  sense  and  the 
categories  ;  it  is  rather  a  flow  of  mental 
discourse,  like  a  dream,  in  which  all  divisions 
and  units  are  vague  and  shifting,  and  the 
whole  is  continually  merging  together  and 
drifting  apart.  It  fades  gradually  in  the 
rear,  like  the  wake  of  a  ship,  and  bites  into 
the  future,  like  the  bow  cutting  the  water. 


WILLIAM  JAMES  69 

For  the  candid  psychologist,  carried  bodily 
on  this  voyage  of  discovery,  the  past  is  but 
a  questionable  report,  and  the  future  wholly 
indeterminate  ;  everything  is  simply  what 
it  is  experienced  as  being. 

At  the  same  time,  psychology  is  supposed 
to  be  a  science,  a  claim  which  would  tend 
to  confine  it  to  the  natural  history  of  man, 
or  the  study  of  behaviour,  as  is  actually 
proposed  by  Auguste  Comte  and  by  some 
of  James's  own  disciples,  more  jejune  if 
more  clear-headed  than  he.  As  matters  now 
stand,  however,  psychology  as  a  whole  is 
not  a  science,  but  a  branch  of  philosophy ; 
it  brings  together  the  literary  description  of 
mental  discourse  and  the  scientific  descrip- 
tion of  material  life,  in  order  to  consider 
the  relation  between  them,  which  is  the 
nexus  of  human  nature. 

What  was  James's  position  on  this  crucial 
question  ?  It  is  impossible  to  reply  un- 
equivocally. He  approached  philosophy  as 
mankind  originally  approached  it,  without 
having  a  philosophy,  and  he  lent  himself 
to  various  hypotheses  in  various  directions. 
He  professed  to  .begin  his  study  on  the  as- 
sumptions of  common  sense,  that  there  is 


70       CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

a  material  world  which  the  animals  that  live 
in  it  are  able  to  perceive  and  to  think  about. 
He  gave  a  congruous  extension  to  this  view 
in  his  theory  that  emotion  is  purely  bodily 
sensation,  and  also  in  his  habit  of  conceiving 
the  mind  as  a  total  shifting  sensibility.  To 
pursue  this  path,  however,  would  have  led 
him  to  admit  that  nature  was  automatic 
and  mind  simply  cognitive,  conclusions 
from  which  every  instinct  in  him  recoiled. 
He  preferred  to  believe  that  mind  and 
matter  had  independent  energies  and  could 
lend  one  another  a  hand,  matter  operating 
by  motion  and  mind  by  intention.  This 
dramatic,  amphibious  way  of  picturing  causa- 
tion is  natural  to  common  sense,  and  might 
be  defended  if  it  were  clearly  defined  ;  but 
James  was  insensibly  carried  away  from  it 
by  a  subtle  implication  of  his  method.  This 
implication  was  that  experience  or  mental 
discourse  not  only  constituted  a  set  of 
substantive  facts,  but  the  only  substantive 
facts ;  all  else,  even  that  material  world 
which  his  psychology  had  postulated,  could 
be  nothing  but  a  verbal  or  fantastic  symbol 
for  sensations  in  their  experienced  order. 
So  that  while  nominally  the  door  was  kept 


WILLIAM  JAMES  71 

open  to  any  hypothesis  regarding  the  con- 
ditions of  the  psychological  flux,  in  truth 
the  question  was  prejudged.  The  hypo- 
theses, which  were  parts  of  this  psychological 
flux,  could  have  no  object  save  other  parts 
of  it.  That  flux  itself,  therefore,  which  he 
could  picture  so  vividly,  was  the  fundamental 
existence.  The  sense  of  bounding  over  the 
waves,  the  sense  of  being  on  an  adventurous 
voyage,  was  the  living  fact ;  the  rest  was 
dead  reckoning.  Where  one's  gift  is,  there 
will  one's  faith  be  also  ;  and  to  this  poet 
appearance  was  the  only  reality. 

This  sentiment,  which  always  lay  at  the 
back  of  his  mind,  reached  something  like 
formal  expression  in  his  latest  writings,  where 
he  sketched  what  he  called  radical  empiricism. 
The  word  experience  is  like  a  shrapnel  shell, 
and  bursts  into  a  thousand  meanings.  Here 
we  must  no  longer  think  of  its  setting,  its 
discoveries,  or  its  march  ;  to  treat  it  radically 
we  must  abstract  its  immediate  objects  and 
reduce  it  to  pure  data.  It  is  obvious  (and 
the  sequel  has  already  proved)  that  experi- 
ence so  understood  would  lose  its  romantic 
signification,  as  a  personal  adventure  or  a 
response  to  the  shocks  of  fortune.     "  Experi- 


72       CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

ence  "  would  turn  into  a  cosmic  dance  of  abso- 
lute entities  created  and  destroyed  in  vacuo 
according  to  universal  laws,  or  perhaps  by 
chance.  No  minds  would  gather  this  experi- 
ence, and  no  material  agencies  would  impose 
it;  but  the  immediate  objects  present  to 
any  one  would  simply  be  parts  of  the  universal 
fireworks,  continuous  with  the  rest,  and  all  the 
parts,  even  if  not  present  to  anybody,  would 
have  the  same  status.  Experience  would 
then  not  at  all  resemble  what  Shakespeare 
reports  or  what  James  himself  had  described 
in  his  psychology.  If  it  could  be  experienced 
as  it  flows  in  its  entirety  (which  is  fortunately 
impracticable),  it  would  be  a  perpetual  mathe- 
matical nightmare.  Every  whirling  atom, 
every  changing  relation,  and  every  incidental 
perspective  would  be  a  part  of  it.  I  am  far 
from  wishing  to  deny  for  a  moment  the 
scientific  value  of  such  a  cosmic  system,  if  it 
can  be  worked  out ;  physics  and  mathematics 
seem  to  me  to  plunge  far  deeper  than  literary 
psychology  into  the  groundwork  of  this 
world  ;  but  human  experience  is  the  stuff  of 
literary  psychology;  we  cannot  reach  the  stuff 
of  physics  and  mathematics  except  by  arrest- 
ing or  even  hypostatising  some  elements  of 


WILLIAM  JAMES  73 

appearance,  and  expanding  them  on  an 
abstracted  and  hypothetical  plane  of  their 
own.  Experience,  as  memory  and  literature 
rehearse  it,  remains  nearer  to  us  than  that : 
it  is  something  dreamful,  passionate,  dramatic, 
and  significative. 

Certainly  this  personal  human  experience, 
expressible  in  literature  and  in  talk,  and  no 
cosmic  system  however  profound,  was  what 
James  knew  best  and  trusted  most.  Had  he 
seen  the  developments  of  his  radical  em- 
piricism, I  cannot  help  thinking  he  would 
have  marvelled  that  such  logical  mechanisms 
should  have  been  hatched  out  of  that  egg. 
The  principal  problems  and  aspirations  that 
haunted  him  all  his  life  long  would  lose  their 
meaning  in  that  cosmic  atmosphere.  The 
pragmatic  nature  of  truth,  for  instance,  would 
never  suggest  itself  in  the  presence  of  pure 
data ;  but  a  romantic  mind  soaked  in 
agnosticism,  conscious  of  its  own  habits 
and  assuming  an  environment  the  exact 
structure  of  which  can  never  be  observed, 
may  well  convince  itself  that,  for  experience, 
truth  is  nothing  but  a  happy  use  of  signs — 
which  is  indeed  the  truth  of  literature.  But 
if  we  once  accept  any  system  of  the  universe 


74       CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

as  literally  true,  the  value  of  convenient  signs 
to  prepare  us  for  such  experience  as  is  yet 
absent  cannot  be  called  truth  :  it  is  plainly 
nothing  but  a  necessary  inaccuracy.  So,  too, 
with  the  question  of  the  survival  of  the 
human  individual  after  death.  For  radical 
empiricism  a  human  individual  is  simply  a 
certain  cycle  or  complex  of  terms,  like  any 
other  natural  fact ;  that  some  echoes  of  his 
mind  should  recur  after  the  regular  chimes 
have  ceased,  would  have  nothing  paradoxical 
about  it.  A  mathematical  world  is  a  good 
deal  like  music,  with  its  repetitions  and  trans- 
positions, and  a  little  trill,  which  you  might 
call  a  person,  might  well  peep  up  here  and 
there  all  over  a  vast  composition.  Some- 
thing of  that  sort  may  be  the  truth  of 
spiritualism ;  but  it  is  not  what  the  spirit- 
ualists imagine.  Their  whole  interest  lies 
not  in  the  experiences  they  have,  but  in  the 
interpretation  they  give  to  them,  assigning 
them  to  troubled  spirits  in  another  world  ; 
but  both  another  world  and  a  spirit  are 
notions  repugnant  to  a  radical  empiricism. 

I  think  it  is  important  to  remember,  if  we 
are  not  to  misunderstand  William  James,  that 
his  radical  empiricism  and  pragmatism  were 


WILLIAM  JAMES  75 

in  his  own  mind  only  methods  ;  his  doctrine, 
if  he  may  be  said  to  have  had  one,  was 
agnosticism.  And  just  because  he  was  an 
agnostic  (feeHng  instinctively  that  beliefs  and 
opinions,  if  they  had  any  objective  beyond 
themselves,  could  never  be  sure  they  had 
attained  it),  he  seemed  in  one  sense  so  favour- 
able to  credulity.  He  was  not  credulous 
himself,  far  from  it ;  he  was  well  aware  that 
the  trust  he  put  in  people  or  ideas  might 
betray  him.  For  that  very  reason  he  was 
respectful  and  pitiful  to  the  trustfulness  of 
others.  Doubtless  they  were  wrong,  but 
who  were  we  to  say  so  ?  In  his  own  person 
he  was  ready  enough  to  face  the  mystery  of 
things,  and  whatever  the  womb  of  time  might 
bring  forth  ;  but  until  the  curtain  was  rung 
down  on  the  last  act  of  the  drama  (and  it 
might  have  no  last  act !)  he  wished  the  intel- 
lectual cripples  and  the  moral  hunchbacks  not 
to  be  jeered  at ;  perhaps  they  might  turn 
out  to  be  the  heroes  of  the  play.  Who  could 
tell  what  heavenly  influences  might  not  pierce 
to  these  sensitive  half -flayed  creatures,  which 
are  lost  on  the  thick-skinned,  the  sane,  and 
the  duly  goggled  ?  We  must  not  suppose, 
however,  that  James  meant  these  contrite 


76        CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

and  romantic  suggestions  dogmatically.  The 
agnostic,  as  well  as  the  physician  and  neuro- 
logist in  him,  was  never  quite  eclipsed.  The 
hope  that  some  new  revelation  might  come 
from  the  lowly  and  weak  could  never  mean 
to  him  what  it  meant  to  the  early  Christians. 
For  him  it  was  only  a  right  conceded  to  them 
to  experiment  with  their  special  faiths  ;  he 
did  not  expect  such  faiths  to  be  discoveries 
of  absolute  fact,  which  everybody  else  might 
be  constrained  to  recognise.  If  any  one  had 
made  such  a  claim,  and  had  seemed  to  have 
some  chance  of  imposing  it  universally, 
James  would  have  been  the  first  to  turn 
against  him  ;  not,  of  course,  on  the  ground 
that  it  was  impossible  that  such  an  orthodoxy 
should  be  true,  but  with  a  profound  conviction 
that  it  was  to  be  feared  and  distrusted.  No  : 
the  degree  of  authority  and  honour  to  be 
accorded  to  various  human  faiths  was  a  moral 
question,  not  a  theoretical  one.  All  faiths 
were  what  they  were  experienced  as  being, 
in  their  capacity  of  faiths ;  these  faiths, 
not  their  objects,  were  the  hard  facts  we 
must  respect.  We  cannot  pass,  except  under 
the  illusion  of  the  moment,  to  anything 
firmer    or    on    a    deeper    level.     There    was 


WILLIAM  JAMES  77 

accordingly  no  sense  of  security,  no  joy,  in 
James's  apology  for  personal  religion.  He 
did  not  really  believe  ;  he  merely  believed  in 
the  right  of  believing  that  you  might  be  right 
if  you  believed. 

It  is  this  underlying  agnosticism  that 
explains  an  incoherence  which  we  might  find 
in  his  popular  works,  where  the  story  and  the 
moral  do  not  seem  to  hang  together.  Pro- 
fessedly they  are  works  of  psychological 
observation  ;  but  the  tendency  and  suasion 
in  them  seems  to  run  to  disintegrating  the 
idea  of  truth,  recommending  belief  without 
reason,  and  encouraging  superstition.  A 
psychologist  who  was  not  an  agnostic  would 
have  indicated,  as  far  as  possible,  whether 
the  beliefs  and  experiences  he  was  describing 
were  instances  of  delusion  or  of  rare  and  fine 
perception,  or  in  what  measure  they  were  a 
mixture  of  both.  But  James — and  this  is 
what  gives  such  romantic  warmth  to  these 
writings  of  his — disclaims  all  antecedent  or 
superior  knowledge,  listens  to  the  testimony 
of  each  witness  in  turn,  and  only  by  accident 
allows  us  to  feel  that  he  is  swayed  by  the 
eloquence  and  vehemence  of  some  of  them 
rather  than  of  others.   This  method  is  modest, 


78       CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

generous,  and  impartial ;  but  if  James  in- 
tended, as  I  think  he  did,  to  picture  the 
drama  of  human  behef,  with  its  risks  and 
triumphs,  the  method  was  inadequate. 
Dramatists  never  hesitate  to  assume,  and 
to  let  the  audience  perceive,  who  is  good  and 
who  bad,  who  wise  and  who  foolish,  in  their 
pieces  ;  otherwise  their  work  would  be  as 
impotent  dramatically  as  scientifically.  The 
tragedy  and  comedy  of  life  lie  precisely  in  the 
contrast  between  the  illusions  or  passions  of 
the  characters  and  their  true  condition  and 
fate,  hidden  from  them  at  first,  but  evident 
to  the  author  and  the  public.  If  in  our 
diffidence  and  scrupulous  fairness  we  refuse 
to  take  this  judicial  attitude,  we  shall  be  led 
to  strange  conclusions.  The  navigator,  for 
instance,  trusting  his  "  experience  "  (which 
here,  as  in  the  case  of  religious  people,  means 
his  imagination  and  his  art),  insists  on  believ- 
ing that  the  earth  is  spherical ;  he  has  sailed 
round  it.  That  is  to  say,  he  has  seemed  to 
himself  to  steer  westward  and  westward,  and 
has  seemed  to  get  home  again.  But  how 
should  he  know  that  home  is  now  where  it 
was  before,  or  that  his  past  and  present 
impressions  of  it  come  from  the  same,  or 


WILLIAM  JAMES  79 

from  any,  material  object  ?  How  should  he 
know  that  space  is  as  trim  and  tri-dimen- 
sional  as  the  discredited  Euclidians  used  to 
say  it  was  ?  If,  on  the  contrary,  my  worthy 
aunt,  trusting  to  her  longer  and  less  am- 
biguous experience  of  her  garden,  insists  that 
the  earth  is  flat,  and  observes  that  the  theory 
that  it  is  round,  which  is  only  a  theory,  is 
much  less  often  tested  and  found  useful  than 
her  own  perception  of  its  flatness,  and  that 
moreover  that  theory  is  pedantic,  intellectual- 
istic,  and  a  product  of  academies,  and  a  rash 
dogma  to  impose  on  mankind  for  ever  and 
ever,  it  might  seem  that  on  James's  principle 
we  ought  to  agree  with  her.  But  no  ;  on 
James's  real  principles  we  need  not  agree 
with  her,  nor  with  the  navigator  either. 
Radical  empiricism,  which  is  radical  agnos- 
ticism, delivers  us  from  so  benighted  a  choice. 
For  the  quarrel  becomes  unmeaning  when  we 
remember  that  the  earth  is  both  flat  and 
round,  if  it  is  experienced  as  being  both. 
The  substantive  fact  is  not  a  single  object 
on  which  both  the  perception  and  the  theory 
are  expected  to  converge  ;  the  substantive 
facts  are  the  theory  and  the  perception  them- 
selves.    And  we  may  note  in  passing  that 


80       CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

empiricism,  when  it  ceases  to  value  experience 
as  a  means  of  discovering  external  things, 
can  give  up  its  ancient  prejudice  in  favour  of 
sense  as  against  imagination,  for  imagination 
and  thought  are  immediate  experiences  as 
much  as  sensation  is :  they  are  therefore,  for 
absolute  empiricism,  no  less  actual  ingredients 
of  reality. 

In  The  Varieties  of  Religious  Experience 
we  find  the  same  apologetic  intention  run- 
ning through  a  vivid  account  of  what  seems 
for  the  most  part  (as  James  acknowledged) 
religious  disease.  Normal  religious  experi- 
ence is  hardly  described  in  it.  Religious 
experience,  for  the  great  mass  of  mankind, 
consists  in  simple  faith  in  the  truth  and 
benefit  of  their  religious  traditions.  But  to 
James  something  so  conventional  and  ration- 
alistic seemed  hardly  experience  and  hardly 
religious  ;  he  was  thinking  only  of  irruptive 
visions  and  feelings  as  interpreted  by  the 
mystics  who  had  them.  These  interpreta- 
tions he  ostensibly  presents,  with  more  or  less 
wistful  sympathy  for  what  they  were  worth  ; 
but  emotionally  he  wished  to  champion  them. 
The  religions  that  had  sprung  up  in  America 
spontaneously  —  communistic,       hysterical, 


WILLIAM  JAMES  81 

spiritistic,  or  medicinal — were  despised  by 
select  and  superior  people.  You  might 
inquire  into  them,  as  you  might  go  slum- 
ming, but  they  remained  suspect  and  dis- 
tasteful. This  picking  up  of  genteel  skirts 
on  the  part  of  his  acquaintance  prompted 
William  James  to  roll  up  his  sleeves — not  for 
a  knock-out  blow,  but  for  a  thorough  clinical 
demonstration.  He  would  tenderly  vivisect 
the  experiences  in  question,  to  show  how 
living  they  were,  though  of  course  he  could 
not  guarantee,  more  than  other  surgeons  do, 
that  the  patient  would  survive  the  operation. 
An  operation  that  eventually  kills  may  be 
technically  successful,  and  the  man  may  die 
cured ;  and  so  a  description  of  religion  that 
showed  it  to  be  madness  might  first  show 
how  real  and  how  warm  it  was,  so  that  if  it 
perished,  at  least  it  would  perish  under- 
stood. 

I  never  observed  in  William  James  any 
personal  anxiety  or  enthusiasm  for  any  of 
these  dubious  tenets.  His  conception  even 
of  such  a  thing  as  free-will,  which  he  always 
ardently  defended,  remained  vague ;  he 
avoided  defining  ^ven  what  he  conceived  to 

be  desirable  in  such  matters.     But  he  wished 

G 


82        CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

to  protect  the  weak  against  the  strong,  and 
what  he  hated  beyond  everything  was  the 
non  possumus  of  any  constituted  authority. 
Philosophy  for  him  had  a  PoHsh  constitu- 
tion ;  so  long  as  a  single  vote  was  cast  against 
the  majority,  nothing  could  pass.  The  sus- 
pense of  judgement  which  he  had  imposed  on 
himself  as  a  duty,  became  almost  a  necessity. 
I  think  it  would  have  depressed  him  if  he 
had  had  to  confess  that  any  important  ques- 
tion was  finally  settled.  He  would  still  have 
hoped  that  something  might  turn  up  on  the 
other  side,  and  that  just  as  the  scientific 
hangman  was  about  to  despatch  the  poor 
convicted  prisoner,  an  unexpected  witness 
would  ride  up  in  hot  haste,  and  prove  him 
innocent.  Experience  seems  to  most  of  us 
to  lead  to  conclusions,  but  empiricism  has 
sworn  never  to  draw  them. 

In  the  discourse  on  "  The  Energies  of 
Men,"  certain  physiological  marvels  are  re- 
corded, as  if  to  suggest  that  the  resources 
of  our  minds  and  bodies  are  infinite,  or  can 
be  infinitely  enlarged  by  divine  grace.  Yet 
James  would  not,  I  am  sure,  have  accepted 
that  inference.  He  would,  under  pressure, 
have  drawn  in  his  mystical  horns  under  his 


WILLIAM  JAMES  88 

scientific  shell;  but  he  was  not  naturalist 
enough  to  feel  instinctively  that  the  wonderful 
and  the  natural  are  all  of  a  piece,  and  that 
only  our  degree  of  habituation  distinguishes 
them.  A  nucleus,  which  we  may  poetically 
call  the  soul,  certainly  lies  within  us,  by  which 
our  bodies  and  minds  are  generated  and  con- 
trolled, like  an  army  by  a  government.  In 
this  nucleus,  since  nature  in  a  small  compass 
has  room  for  anything,  vast  quantities  of 
energy  may  well  be  stored  up,  which  may  be 
tapped  on  occasion,  or  which  may  serve  like 
an  electric  spark  to  let  loose  energy  previously 
existing  in  the  grosser  parts.  But  the  absol- 
ute autocracy  of  this  central  power,  or  its 
success  in  imposing  extraordinary  trials  on 
its  subjects,  is  not  an  obvious  good.  Perhaps, 
like  a  democratic  government,  the  soul  is  at 
its  best  when  it  merely  collects  and  co- 
ordinates the  impulses  coming  from  the 
senses.  The  inner  man  is  at  times  a  tyrant, 
parasitical,  wasteful,  and  voluptuous.  At 
other  times  he  is  fanatical  and  mad.  When 
he  asks  for  and  obtains  violent  exertions  from 
the  body,  the  question  often  is,  as  with  the 
exploits  of  conquerors  and  conjurers,  whether 
the  impulse  to  do  such  prodigious  things  was 


84       CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

not  gratuitous,  and  the  things  nugatory. 
Who  would  wish  to  be  a  mystic  ?  James 
himself,  who  by  nature  was  a  spirited  rather 
than  a  spiritual  man,  had  no  liking  for  sancti- 
monious transcendentalists,  visionaries,  or 
ascetics ;  he  hated  minds  that  run  thin.  But 
he  hastened  to  correct  this  manly  impulse, 
lest  it  should  be  unjust,  and  forced  himself  to 
overcome  his  repugnance.  This  was  made 
easier  when  the  unearthly  phenomenon  had 
a  healing  or  saving  function  in  the  everyday 
material  world  ;  miracle  then  re-established 
its  ancient  identity  with  medicine,  and  both 
of  them  were  humanised.  Even  when  this 
union  was  not  attained,  James  was  reconciled 
to  the  miracle-workers  partly  by  his  great 
charity,  and  partly  by  his  hunter's  instinct 
to  follow  a  scent,  for  he  believed  discoveries 
to  be  imminent.  Besides,  a  philosopher  who  is 
a  teacher  of  youth  is  more  concerned  to  give 
people  a  right  start  than  a  right  conclusion. 
James  fell  in  with  the  hortatory  tradition  of 
college  sages ;  he  turned  his  psychology, 
whenever  he  could  do  so  honestly,  to  purposes 
of  edification ;  and  his  little  sermons  on 
habit,  on  will,  on  faith,  and  this  on  the  latent 
capacities  of  men,  were  fine  and  stirring,  and 


WILLIAM  JAMES  85 

just  the  sermons  to  preach  to  the  young 
Christian  soldier.  He  was  much  less  sceptical 
in  morals  than  in  science.  He  seems  to  have 
felt  sure  that  certain  thoughts  and  hopes — 
those  familiar  to  a  liberal  Protestantism — 
were  every  man's  true  friends  in  life.  This 
assumption  would  have  been  hard  to  defend 
if  he  or  those  he  habitually  addressed  had 
ever  questioned  it ;  yet  his  whole  argument 
for  voluntarily  cultivating  these  beliefs  rests 
on  this  assumption,  that  they  are  beneficent. 
Since,  whether  we  will  or  no,  we  cannot  escape 
the  risk  of  error,  and  must  succumb  to  some 
human  or  pathological  bias,  at  least  we  might 
do  so  gracefully  and  in  the  form  that  would 
profit  us  most,  by  clinging  to  those  prejudices 
which  help  us  to  lead  what  we  all  feel  is  a 
good  life.  But  what  is  a  good  life  ?  Had 
William  James,  had  the  people  about  him, 
had  modern  philosophers  anywhere,  any 
notion  of  that  ?  I  cannot  think  so.  They 
had  much  experience  of  personal  goodness, 
and  love  of  it ;  they  had  standards  of 
character  and  right  conduct ;  but  as  to  what 
might  render  human  existence  good,  excellent, 
beautiful,  happy,  and  worth  having  as  a 
whole,  their  notions  were  utterly  thin  and 


86        CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

barbarous.     They  had  forgotten  the  Greeks, 
or  never  known  them. 

This  argument  accordingly  suffers  from 
the  same  weakness  as  the  similar  argument 
of  Pascal  in  favour  of  Catholic  orthodoxy. 
You  should  force  yourself  to  believe  in  it, 
he  said,  because  if  you  do  so  and  are  right 
you  win  heaven,  while  if  you  are  wrong 
you  lose  nothing.  What  would  Protestants, 
Mohammedans,  and  Hindus  say  to  that  ? 
Those  alternatives  of  Pascal's  are  not  the 
sole  nor  the  true  alternatives  ;  such  a  wager 
— betting  on  the  improbable  because  you 
are  offered  big  odds — is  an  unworthy  parody 
of  the  real  choice  between  wisdom  and  folly. 
There  is  no  heaven  to  be  won  in  such  a 
spirit,  and  if  there  was,  a  philosopher  would 
despise  it.  So  William  James  would  have  us 
bet  on  immortality,  or  bet  on  our  power  to 
succeed,  because  if  we  win  the  wager  we  can 
live  to  congratulate  ourselves  on  our  true 
instinct,  while  we  lose  nothing  if  we  have 
made  a  mistake  ;  for  unless  you  have  the 
satisfaction  of  finding  that  you  have  been 
right,  the  dignity  of  having  been  right  is 
apparently  nothing.  Or  if  the  argument 
is  rather  that  these  beliefs,  whether  true  or 


WILLIAM  JAMES  87 

false,  make  life  better  in  this  world,  the 
thing  is  simply  false.  To  be  boosted  by  an 
illusion  is  not  to  live  better  than  to  live  in 
harmony  with  the  truth  ;  it  is  not  nearly 
so  safe,  not  nearly  so  sweet,  and  not  nearly 
so  fruitful.  These  refusals  to  part  with  a 
decayed  illusion  are  really  an  infection  to  the 
mind.  Believe,  certainly  ;  we  cannot  help 
believing ;  but  believe  rationally,  holding 
what  seems  certain  for  certain,  what  seems 
probable  for  probable,  what  seems  desirable 
for  desirable,  and  what  seems  false  for  false. 
In  this  matter,  as  usual,  James  had  a 
true  psychological  fact  and  a  generous  in- 
stinct behind  his  confused  moral  suggestions. 
It  is  a  psychological  fact  that  men  are 
influenced  in  their  beliefs  by  their  will  and 
desires  ;  indeed,  I  think  we  can  go  further 
and  say  that  in  its  essence  belief  is  an 
expression  of  impulse,  of  readiness  to  act. 
It  is  only  peripherally,  as  our  action  is 
gradually  adjusted  to  things,  and  our  impulses 
to  our  possible  or  necessary  action,  that  our 
ideas  begin  to  hug  the  facts,  and  to  acquire 
a  true,  if  still  a  symbolic,  significance.  We 
do  not  need  a  ^ill  to  believe  ;  we  only  need 
a  will  to  study  the  object  in  which  we  are 


88       CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

inevitably  believing.  But  James  was  think- 
ing less  of  belief  in  what  we  find  than  of 
belief  in  what  we  hope  for  :  a  belief  which  is 
not  at  all  clear  and  not  at  all  necessary  in  the 
life  of  mortals.  Like  most  Americans,  how- 
ever, only  more  lyrically,  James  felt  the  call 
of  the  future  and  the  assurance  that  it 
could  be  made  far  better,  totally  other, 
than  the  past.  The  pictures  that  religion 
had  painted  of  heaven  or  the  millennium 
were  not  what  he  prized,  although  his 
Swedenborgian  connection  might  have  made 
him  tender  to  them,  as  perhaps  it  did  to 
familiar  spirits.  It  was  the  moral  succour 
offered  by  religion,  its  open  spaces,  the 
possibility  of  miracles  in  extremis,  that  must 
be  retained.  If  we  recoiled  at  the  thought  of 
being  dupes  (which  is  perhaps  what  nature 
intended  us  to  be),  were  we  less  likely  to  be 
dupes  in  disbelieving  these  sustaining  truths 
than  in  believing  them  ?  Faith  was  needed 
to  bring  about  the  reform  of  faith  itself,  as 
well  as  all  other  reforms. 

In  some  cases  faith  in  success  could  nerve 
us  to  bring  success  about,  and  so  justify 
itself  by  its  own  operation.  This  is  a  thought 
typical  of  James  at  his  worst — a  worst  in 


WILLIAM  JAMES  89 

which  there  is  always  a  good  side.  Here 
again  psychological  observation  is  used  with 
the  best  intentions  to  hearten  oneself  and 
other  people  ;  but  the  fact  observed  is  not 
at  all  understood,  and  a  moral  twist  is  given 
to  it  which  (besides  being  morally  question- 
able) almost  amounts  to  falsifying  the  fact 
itself.  Why  does  belief  that  you  can  jump  a 
ditch  help  you  to  jump  it  ?  Because  it  is  a 
symptom  of  the  fact  that  you  could  jump 
it,  that  your  legs  were  fit  and  that  the 
ditch  was  two  yards  wide  and  not  twenty. 
A  rapid  and  just  appreciation  of  these  facts 
has  given  you  your  confidence,  or  at  least  has 
made  it  reasonable,  manly,  and  prophetic  ; 
otherwise  you  would  have  been  a  fool  and 
got  a  ducking  for  it.  Assurance  is  con- 
temptible and  fatal  unless  it  is  self-know- 
ledge. If  you  had  been  rattled  you  might 
have  failed,  because  that  would  have  been 
a  symptom  of  the  fact  that  you  were  out  of 
gear  ;  you  would  have  been  afraid  because 
you  trembled,  as  James  at  his  best  pro- 
claimed. You  would  never  have  quailed  if 
your  system  had  been  reacting  smoothly  to 
its  opportunities^  any  more  than  you  would 
totter  and  see  double  if  you  were  not  intoxi- 


90        CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

cated.  Fear  is  a  sensation  of  actual  nerv- 
ousness and  disarray,  and  confidence  a 
sensation  of  actual  readiness  ;  they  are  not 
disembodied  feelings,  existing  for  no  reason, 
the  devil  Funk  and  the  angel  Courage,  one 
or  the  other  of  whom  may  come  down 
arbitrarily  into  your  body,  and  revolution- 
ise it.  That  is  childish  mythology,  which 
survives  innocently  enough  as  a  figure  of 
speech,  until  a  philosopher  is  found  to  take 
that  figure  of  speech  seriously.  Nor  is  the 
moral  suggestion  here  less  unsound.  What 
is  good  is  not  the  presumption  of  power, 
but  the  possession  of  it :  a  clear  head,  aware 
of  its  resources,  not  a  fuddled  optimism,  call- 
ing up  spirits  from  the  vasty  deep.  Courage 
is  not  a  virtue,  said  Socrates,  unless  it  is  also 
wisdom.  Could  anything  be  truer  both  of 
courage  in  doing  and  of  courage  in  believing  ? 
But  it  takes  tenacity,  it  takes  reasonable 
courage,  to  stick  to  scientific  insights  such 
as  this  of  Socrates  or  that  of  James  about  the 
emotions ;  it  is  easier  to  lapse  into  the  tradi- 
tional manner,  to  search  natural  philosophy 
for  miracles  and  moral  lessons,  and  in  morals 
proper,  in  the  reasoned  expression  of  prefer- 
ence, to  splash  about  without  a  philosophy. 


WILLIAM  JAMES  91 

William  James  shared  the  passions  of 
liberalism.  He  belonged  to  the  left,  which, 
as  they  say  in  Spain,  is  the  side  of  the  heart, 
as  the  right  is  that  of  the  liver ;  at  any  rate 
there  was  much  blood  and  no  gall  in  his 
philosophy.  He  was  one  of  those  elder 
Americans  still  disquieted  by  the  ghost  of 
tyranny,  social  and  ecclesiastical.  Even  the 
beauties  of  the  past  troubled  him  ;  he  had 
a  puritan  feeling  that  they  were  tainted. 
They  had  been  cruel  and  frivolous,  and  must 
have  suppressed  far  better  things.  But 
what,  we  may  ask,  might  these  better  things 
be  ?  It  may  do  for  a  revolutionary  politician 
to  say  :  "I  may  not  know  what  I  want — 
except  office — but  I  know  what  I  don't 
want  "  ;  it  will  never  do  for  a  philosopher. 
Aversions  and  fears  imply  principles  of 
preference,  goods  acknowledged ;  and  it 
is  the  philosopher's  business  to  make  these 
goods  explicit.  Liberty  is  not  an  art,  liberty 
must  be  used  to  bring  some  natural  art  to 
fruition.  Shall  it  be  simply  eating  and 
drinking  and  wondering  what  will  happen 
next  ?  If  there  is  some  deep  and  settled 
need  in  the  hea^;t  of  man,  to  give  direction 
to  his  efforts,  what  else  should  a  philosopher 


92       CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

do   but   discover   and   announce   what  that 
need  is  ? 

There  is  a  sense  in  which  James  was  not 
a  philosopher  at  all.  He  once  said  to  me  : 
"  What  a  curse  philosophy  would  be  if  we 
couldn't  forget  all  about  it !  "  In  other 
words,  philosophy  was  not  to  him  what  it 
has  been  to  so  many,  a  consolation  and 
sanctuary  in  a  life  which  would  have  been 
unsatisfying  without  it.  It  would  be  in- 
congruous, therefore,  to  expect  of  him  that 
he  should  build  a  philosophy  like  an  edifice 
to  go  and  live  in  for  good.  Philosophy  to 
him  was  rather  like  a  maze  in  which  he  hap- 
pened to  find  himself  wandering,  and  what 
he  was  looking  for  was  the  way  out.  In 
the  presence  of  theories  of  any  sort  he  was 
attentive,  puzzled,  suspicious,  with  a  certain 
inner  prompting  to  disregard  them.  He 
lived  all  his  life  among  them,  as  a  child  lives 
among  grown-up  people;  what  a  relief  to 
turn  from  those  stolid  giants,  with  their 
prohibitions  and  exactions  and  tiresome  talk, 
to  another  real  child  or  a  nice  animal !  Of 
course  grown-up  people  are  useful,  and  so 
James  considered  that  theories  might  be ; 
but  in  themselves,  to  live  with,  they  were 


WILLIAM  JAMES  98 

rather  in  the  way,  and  at  bottom  our  natural 
enemies.  It  was  well  to  challenge  one  or 
another  of  them  when  you  got  a  chance  ; 
perhaps  that  challenge  might  break  some 
spell,  transform  the  strange  landscape,  and 
simplify  life.  A  theory  while  you  were 
creating  or  using  it  was  like  a  story  you 
were  telling  yourself  or  a  game  you  were 
playing ;  it  was  a  warm,  self-justifying 
thing  then  ;  but  when  the  glow  of  creation 
or  expectation  was  over,  a  theory  was  a 
phantom,  like  a  ghost,  or  like  the  minds  of 
other  people.  To  all  other  people,  even  to 
ghosts,  William  James  was  the  soul  of 
courtesy  ;  and  he  was  civil  to  most  theories 
as  well,  as  to  more  or  less  interesting 
strangers  that  invaded  him.  Nobody  ever 
recognised  more  heartily  the  chance  that 
others  had  of  being  right,  and  the  right  they 
had  to  be  different.  Yet  when  it  came  to 
understanding  what  they  meant,  whether 
they  were  theories  or  persons,  his  intuition 
outran  his  patience  ;  he  made  some  brilliant 
impressionistic  sketch  in  his  fancy  and  called 
it  by  their  name.  This  sketch  was  as  often 
flattered  as  distorted,  and  he  was  at  times 
the  dupe  of  his  desire  to  be  appreciative  and 


94        CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

give  the  devil  his  due  ;  he  was  too  impulsive 
for  exact  sympathy ;  too  subjective,  too 
romantic,  to  be  just.  Love  is  very  pene- 
trating, but  it  penetrates  to  possibilities 
rather  than  to  facts.  The  logic  of  opinions, 
as  well  as  the  exact  opinions  themselves, 
were  not  things  James  saw  easily,  or  traced 
with  pleasure.  He  liked  to  take  things  one 
by  one,  rather  than  to  put  two  and  two 
together.  He  was  a  mystic,  a  mystic  in 
love  with  life.  He  was  comparable  to  Rous- 
seau and  to  Walt  Whitman  ;  he  expressed  a 
generous  and  tender  sensibility,  rebelling 
against  sophistication,  and  preferring  daily 
sights  and  sounds,  and  a  vague  but  indomit- 
able faith  in  fortune,  to  any  settled  intellectual 
tradition  calling  itself  science  or  philosophy. 
A  prophet  is  not  without  honour  save  in 
his  own  country  ;  and  until  the  return  wave 
of  James's  reputation  reached  America  from 
Europe,  his  pupils  and  friends  were  hardly 
aware  that  he  was  such  a  distinguished  man. 
Everybody  liked  him,  and  delighted  in  him 
for  his  generous,  gullible  nature  and  brilliant 
sallies.  He  was  a  sort  of  Irishman  among 
the  Brahmins,  and  seemed  hardly  imposing 
enough  for  a  great  man.     They  laughed  at 


WILLIAM  JAMES  95 

his  erratic  views  and  his  undisguised  Hmita- 
tions.  Of  course  a  conscientious  professor 
ought  to  know  everything  he  professes  to 
know,  but  then,  they  thought,  a  dignified  pro- 
fessor ought  to  seem  to  know  everything.  The 
precise  theologians  and  panopUed  ideaUsts, 
who  exist  even  in  America,  shook  their  heads. 
What  sound  philosophy,  said  they  to  them- 
selves, could  be  expected  from  an  irresponsible 
doctor,  who  was  not  even  a  college  graduate, 
a  crude  empiricist,  and  vivisector  of  frogs  ? 
On  the  other  hand,  the  solid  men  of  business 
were  not  entirely  reassured  concerning  a 
teacher  of  youth  who  seemed  to  have  no 
system  in  particular — the  ignorant  rather 
demand  that  the  learned  should  have  a 
system  in  store,  to  be  applied  at  a  pinch; 
and  they  could  not  quite  swallow  a  private 
gentleman  who  dabbled  in  hypnotism,  fre- 
quented mediums,  didn't  talk  like  a  book, 
and  didn't  write  like  a  book,  except  like 
one  of  his  own.  Even  his  pupils,  attached 
as  they  invariably  were  to  his  person,  felt 
some  doubts  about  the  profundity  of  one 
who  was  so  very  natural,  and  who  after  some 
interruption  duri^^g  a  lecture — and  he  said 
life  was  a  series  of  interruptions — would  slap 


96       CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

his  forehead  and  ask  the  man  in  the  front 
row  "  What  was  I  talking  about  ?  "  Perhaps 
in  the  first  years  of  his  teaching  he  felt  a 
little  in  the  professor's  chair  as  a  military 
man  might  feel  when  obliged  to  read  the 
prayers  at  a  funeral.  He  probably  con- 
ceived what  he  said  more  deeply  than  a 
more  scholastic  mind  might  have  conceived 
it ;  yet  he  would  have  been  more  comfortable 
if  some  one  else  had  said  it  for  him.  He 
liked  to  open  the  window,  and  look  out  for 
a  moment.  I  think  he  was  glad  when  the 
bell  rang,  and  he  could  be  himself  again  until 
the  next  day.  But  in  the  midst  of  this 
routine  of  the  class-room  the  spirit  would 
sometimes  come  upon  him,  and,  leaning  his 
head  on  his  hand,  he  would  let  fall  golden 
words,  picturesque,  fresh  from  the  heart, 
full  of  the  knowledge  of  good  and  evil.  Inci- 
dentally there  would  crop  up  some  humorous 
characterisation,  some  candid  confession  of 
doubt  or  of  instinctive  preference,  some 
pungent  scrap  of  learning  ;  radicalisms  plung- 
ing sometimes  into  the  sub-soil  of  all  human 
philosophies ;  and,  on  occasion,  thoughts  of 
simple  wisdom  and  wistful  piety,  the  most 
unfeigned  and  manly  that  anybody  ever  had. 


CHAPTER  IV 

JOSIAH    ROYCE 

Meantime  the  mantle  of  philosophical 
authority  had  fallen  at  Harvard  upon  other 
shoulders.  A  young  Calif ornian,  Josiah 
Royce,  had  come  back  from  Germany  with  a 
reputation  for  wisdom  ;  and  even  without 
knowing  that  he  had  already  produced  a  new 
proof  of  the  existence  of  God,  merely  to  look 
at  him  you  would  have  felt  that  he  was  a 
philosopher ;  his  great  head  seemed  too 
heavy  for  his  small  body,  and  his  portentous 
brow,  crowned  with  thick  red  hair,  seemed 
to  crush  the  lower  part  of  his  face.  "  Royce," 
said  William  James  of  him,  "  has  an  in- 
decent exposure  of  forehead."  There  was  a 
suggestion  about  him  of  the  benevolent 
ogre  or  the  old  child,  in  whom  a  preter- 
natural sharpness  of  insight  lurked  beneath  a 

grotesque  mask.     If  you  gave  him  any  cue,  or 

97  H 


98       CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

even  without  one,  he  could  discourse  broadly 
on  any  sub j  ect ;  you  never  caught  him  napping. 
Whatever  the  text-books  and  encyclopaedias 
could  tell  him,  he  knew  ;   and  if  the  impres- 
sion he  left  on  your  mind  was  vague,  that 
was  partly  because,  in  spite  of  his  compre- 
hensiveness, he  seemed  to  view  everything 
in  relation  to  something  else  that  remained 
untold.       His    approach    to    anything    was 
oblique  ;    he  began  a  long  way  off,  perhaps 
with  the  American  preface  of  a  funny  story  ; 
and  when  the  point  came  in  sight,  it  was  at 
once  enveloped  again  in  a  cloud  of  qualifica- 
tions, in  the  parliamentary  jargon  of  philo- 
sophy.    The  tap  once  turned  on,  out  flowed 
the  stream  of  systematic   disquisition,   one 
hour,  two  hours,  three  hours  of  it,  according 
to  demand  or  opportunity.     The  voice,  too, 
was    merciless    and    harsh.      You    felt    the 
overworked,  standardised,  academic  engine, 
creaking  and  thumping  on  at  the  call  of  duty 
or  of  habit,  with  no  thought  of  sparing  itself 
or    any    one    else.     Yet    a    sprightlier    soul 
behind  this  performing  soul  seemed  to  watch 
and    laugh    at    the    process.     Sometimes    a 
merry  light  would  twinkle  in  the  little  eyes, 
and  a  bashful  smile  would  creep  over  the 


JOSIAH  ROYCE  99 

uncompromising  mouth.  A  sense  of  the 
paradox,  the  irony,  the  inconclusiveness  of 
the  whole  argument  would  pierce  to  the 
surface,  like  a  white-cap  bursting  here  and 
there  on  the  heavy  swell  of  the  sea. 

His  procedure  was  first  to  gather  and 
digest  whatever  the  sciences  or  the  devil 
might  have  to  say.  He  had  an  evident  sly 
pleasure  in  the  degustation  and  savour  of 
difficulties  ;  biblical  criticism,  the  struggle 
for  life,  the  latest  German  theory  of  sexual 
insanity,  had  no  terrors  for  him  ;  it  was 
all  grist  for  the  mill,  and  woe  to  any  tender 
thing,  any  beauty  or  any  illusion,  that 
should  get  between  that  upper  and  that 
nether  millstone  !  He  seemed  to  say  :  If 
I  were  not  Alexander  how  gladly  would  I 
be  Diogenes,  and  if  I  had  not  a  system  to 
defend,  how  easily  I  might  tell  you  the 
truth.  But  after  the  sceptic  had  ambled 
quizzically  over  the  ground,  the  prophet 
would  mount  the  pulpit  to  survey  it.  He 
would  then  prove  that  in  spite  of  all  those 
horrors  and  contradictions,  or  rather  be- 
cause of  them,  the  universe  was  absolutely 
perfect.  For  behind  that  mocking  soul  in 
him  there  was  yet  another,  a  devout  and 


100     CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

heroic  soul.  Royce  was  heir  to  the  Calvin- 
istic  tradition  ;  piety,  to  his  mind,  consisted 
in  trusting  divine  providence  and  justice, 
while  emphasising  the  most  terrifying  truths 
about  one's  own  depravity  and  the  sinister 
holiness  of  God.  He  accordingly  addressed 
himself,  in  his  chief  writings,  to  showing 
that  all  lives  were  parts  of  a  single  divine 
life  in  which  all  problems  were  solved  and 
all  evils  justified. 

It  is  characteristic  of  Royce  that  in  his 
proof  of  something  sublime,  like  the  existence 
of  God,  his  premiss  should  be  something  sad 
and  troublesome,  the  existence  of  error. 
Error  exists,  he  tells  us,  and  common  sense 
will  readily  agree,  although  the  fact  is  not 
unquestionable,  and  pure  mystics  and  pure 
sensualists  deny  it.  But  if  error  exists, 
Royce  continues,  there  must  be  a  truth 
from  which  it  differs  ;  and  the  existence  of 
truth  (according  to  the  principle  of  idealism, 
that  nothing  can  exist  except  for  a  mind 
that  knows  it)  implies  that  some  one  knows 
the  truth ;  but  as  to  know  the  truth 
thoroughly,  and  supply  the  corrective  to 
every  possible  error,  involves  omniscience, 
we  have  proved  the  existence  of  an  omniscient 


JOSIAH  ROYCE  101 

mind  or  universal  thought ;  and  this  is 
almost,  if  not  quite,  equivalent  to  the 
existence  of  God. 

What  carried  Royce  over  the  evident 
chasms  and  assumptions  in  this  argument 
was  his  earnestness  and  passionate  eloquence. 
He  passed  for  an  eminent  logician,  because  he 
was  dialectical  and  fearless  in  argument  and 
delighted  in  the  play  of  formal  relations  ;  he 
was  devoted  to  chess,  music,  and  mathe- 
matics ;  but  all  this  show  of  logic  was  but  a 
screen  for  his  heart,  and  in  his  heart  there  was 
no  clearness.  His  reasoning  was  not  pure 
logic  or  pure  observation ;  it  was  always 
secretly  enthusiastic  or  malicious,  and  the 
result  it  arrived  at  had  been  presupposed. 
Here,  for  instance,  no  unprejudiced  thinker, 
not  to  speak  of  a  pure  logician,  would  have 
dreamt  of  using  the  existence  of  error  to 
found  the  being  of  truth  upon.  Error  is  a 
biological  accident  which  may  any  day  cease 
to  exist,  say  at  the  extinction  of  the  human 
race  ;  whereas  the  being  of  truth  or  fact  is 
involved  indefeasibly  and  eternally  in  the 
existence  of  anything  whatever,  past,  present, 
or  future  ;  eve^  event  of  itself  renders  true 
or  false  any  proposition  that  refers  to  it.     No 


102    CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

one  would  conceive  of  such  a  thing  as  error 
or  suspect  its  presence,  unless  he  had  already 
found  or  assumed  many  a  truth  ;  nor  could 
anything  be  an  error  actually  unless  the  truth 
was  definite  and  real.  All  this  Royce  of 
course  recognised,  and  it  was  in  some  sense 
the  heart  of  what  he  meant  to  assert  and  to 
prove  ;  but  it  does  not  need  proving  and 
hardly  asserting.  What  needed  proof  was 
something  else,  of  less  logical  importance  but 
far  greater  romantic  interest,  namely,  that 
the  truth  was  hovering  over  us  and  about  to 
descend  into  our  hearts  ;  and  this  Royce  was 
not  disinclined  to  confuse  with  the  being  of 
truth,  so  as  to  bring  it  within  the  range  of 
logical  argument.  He  was  tormented  by  the 
suspicion  that  he  might  be  himself  in  the 
toils  of  error,  and  fervently  aspired  to  escape 
from  it.  Error  to  him  was  no  natural,  and 
in  itself  harmless,  incident  of  finitude  ;  it 
was  a  sort  of  sin,  as  finitude  was  too.  It  was 
a  part  of  the  problem  of  evil ;  a  terrible  and 
urgent  problem  when  your  first  postulate  or 
dogma  is  that  moral  distinctions  and  moral 
experience  are  the  substance  of  the  world, 
and  not  merely  an  incident  in  it.  The  mere 
being  of  truth,  which  is  all  a  logician  needs, 


JOSIAH  ROYCE  103 

would  not  help  him  in  this  wrestling  for 
personal  salvation  ;  as  he  keenly  felt  and 
often  said,  the  truth  is  like  the  stars,  always 
laughing  at  us.  Nothing  would  help  him  but 
possession  of  the  truth,  something  eventual 
and  terribly  problematic.  He  longed  to 
believe  that  all  his  troubles  and  questions, 
some  day  and  somewhere,  must  find  their 
solution  and  quietus  ;  if  not  in  his  own  mind, 
in  some  kindred  spirit  that  he  could,  to  that 
extent,  identify  with  himself.  There  must 
be  not  only  cold  truth,  not  even  cold  truth 
personified,  but  victorious  knowledge  of  the 
truth,  breaking  like  a  sun-burst  through  the 
clouds  of  error.  The  nerve  of  his  argument 
was  not  logical  at  all ;  it  was  a  confession  of 
religious  experience,  in  which  the  agonised 
consciousness  of  error  led  to  a  strong  imagina- 
tive conviction  that  the  truth  would  be  found 
at  last. 

The  truth,  as  here  conceived,  meant  the 
whole  truth  about  everything  ;  and  certainly, 
if  any  plausible  evidence  for  such  a  conclusion 
could  be  adduced,  it  would  be  interesting  to 
learn  that  we  are  destined  to  become  omni- 
scient, or  are  secretly  omniscient  already. 
Nevertheless,  the  aspiration  of  all  religious 


104      CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

minds  does  not  run  that  way.  Aristotle  tells 
us  that  there  are  many  things  it  is  better  not 
to  know ;  and  his  sublime  deity  is  happily 
ignorant  of  our  errors  and  of  our  very  exist- 
ence ;  more  emphatically  so  the  even  sublimer 
deities  of  Plotinus  and  the  Indians.  The 
omniscience  which  our  religion  attributes  to 
God  as  the  searcher  of  hearts  and  the  judge 
of  conduct  has  a  moral  function  rather  than 
a  logical  one ;  it  prevents  us  from  hiding  our 
sins  or  being  unrecognised  in  our  merits  ;  it 
is  not  conceived  to  be  requisite  in  order  that 
it  may  be  true  that  those  sins  or  merits  have 
existed.  Atheists  admit  the  facts,  but  they 
are  content  or  perhaps  relieved  that  they 
should  pass  unobserved.  But  here  again 
Royce  slipped  into  a  romantic  equivocation 
which  a  strict  logician  would  not  have 
tolerated.  Knowledge  of  the  truth,  a  passing 
psychological  possession,  was  substituted  for 
the  truth  known,  and  this  at  the  cost  of  rather 
serious  ultimate  confusions.  It  is  the  truth 
itself,  the  facts  in  their  actual  relations,  that 
honest  opinion  appeals  to,  not  to  another 
opinion  or  instance  of  knowledge ;  and  if,  in 
your  dream  of  warm  sympathy  and  public 
corroboration,  you  lay  up  your  treasure  in 


JOSIAH  ROYCE  105 

some  instance  of  knowledge,  which  time  and 
doubt  might  corrupt,  you  have  not  laid  up 
your  treasure  in  heaven.  In  striving  to  prove 
the  being  of  truth,  the  young  Royce  absurdly 
treated  it  as  doubtful,  setting  a  bad  example 
to  the  pragmatists  ;  while  in  striving  to  lend 
a  psychological  quality  to  this  truth  and 
turning  it  into  a  problematical  instance  of 
knowledge,  he  unwittingly  deprived  it  of  all 
authority  and  sublimity.  To  personify  the 
truth  is  to  care  less  for  truth  than  for  the  cor- 
roboration and  sympathy  which  the  truth, 
become  human,  might  bring  to  our  opinions. 
It  is  to  set  up  another  thinker,  ourself  en- 
larged, to  vindicate  us  ;  without  considering 
that  this  second  thinker  would  be  shut  up, 
like  us,  in  his  own  opinions,  and  would  need 
to  look  to  the  truth  beyond  him  as  much  as 
we  do. 

To  the  old  problem  of  evil  Royce  could 
only  give  an  old  answer,  although  he  redis- 
covered and  repeated  it  for  himself  in  many 
ways,  since  it  was  the  core  of  his  whole 
system.  Good,  he  said,  is  essentially  the 
struggle  with  evil  and  the  victory  over  it ; 
so  that  if  evil  did  not  exist,  good  would  be 
impossible.     I  do  not  think  this  answer  set 


106     CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

him  at  rest ;  he  could  hardly  help  feeling  that 
all  goods  are  not  of  that  bellicose  description, 
and  that  not  all  evils  produce  a  healthy  re- 
action or  are  swallowed  up  in  victory  ;  yet 
the  fact  that  the  most  specious  solution  to 
this  problem  of  evil  left  it  unsolved  was  in  its 
way  appropriate  ;  for  if  the  problem  had 
been  really  solved,  the  struggle  to  find  a 
solution  and  the  faith  that  there  was  one 
would  come  to  an  end  ;  yet  perhaps  this  faith 
and  this  struggle  are  themselves  the  supreme 
good.  Accordingly  the  true  solution  of  this 
problem,  which  we  may  all  accept,  is  that  no 
solution  can  ever  be  found. 

Here  is  an  example  of  the  difference 
between  the  being  of  truth  and  the  ultimate 
solution  of  all  our  problems.  There  is 
certainly  a  truth  about  evil,  and  in  this  case 
not  an  unknown  truth  ;  yet  it  is  no  solution 
to  the  "  problem  "  which  laid  the  indomitable 
Royce  on  the  rack.  If  a  younger  son  asks 
why  he  was  not  born  before  his  elder  brother, 
that  question  may  represent  an  intelligible 
state  of  his  feelings  ;  but  there  is  no  answer 
to  it,  because  it  is  a  childish  question.  So 
the  question  why  it  is  right  that  there  should 
be  any  evil  is  itself  perverse  and  raised  by 


JOSIAH  ROYCE  107 

false  presumptions.  To  an  unsophisticated 
mortal  the  existence  of  evil  presents  a  task, 
never  a  problem.  Evil,  like  error,  is  an 
incident  of  animal  life,  inevitable  in  a  crowded 
and  unsettled  world,  where  one  spontaneous 
movement  is  likely  to  thwart  another,  and 
all  to  run  up  against  material  impossibilities. 
While  life  lasts  this  task  is  recurrent,  and 
every  creature,  in  proportion  to  the  vitality 
and  integrity  of  his  nature,  strives  to  remove 
or  abate  those  evils  of  which  he  is  sensible. 
When  the  case  is  urgent  and  he  is  helpless, 
he  will  cry  out  for  divine  aid  ;  and  (if  he  does 
not  perish  first)  he  will  soon  see  this  aid 
coming  to  him  through  some  shift  in  the 
circumstances  that  renders  his  situation  en- 
durable. Positive  religion  takes  a  natural- 
istic view  of  things,  and  requires  it.  It  parts 
company  with  a  scientific  naturalism  only  in 
accepting  the  authority  of  instinct  or  reve- 
lation in  deciding  certain  questions  of  fact, 
such  as  immortality  or  miracles.  It  rouses 
itself  to  crush  evil,  without  asking  why  evil 
exists.  What  could  be  more  intelligible  than 
that  a  deity  like  Jehovah,  a  giant  inhabitant 
of  the  natural  \^forld,  should  be  confronted 
with  rivals,  enemies,  and  rebellious  children  ? 


108     CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

What  could  be  more  intelligible  than  that 
the  inertia  of  matter,  or  pure  chance,  or  some 
contrary  purpose,  should  mar  the  expression 
of  any  platonic  idea  exercising  its  magic 
influence  over  the  world  ?  For  the  Greek  as 
for  the  Jew  the  task  of  morals  is  the  same : 
to  subdue  nature  as  far  as  possible  to  the  uses 
of  the  soul,  by  whatever  agencies  material  or 
spiritual  may  be  at  hand  ;  and  when  a  limit 
is  reached  in  that  direction,  to  harden  and 
cauterise  the  heart  in  the  face  of  inevitable 
evils,  opening  it  wide  at  the  same  time  to 
every  sweet  influence  that  may  descend  to  it 
from  heaven.  Never  for  a  moment  was 
positive  religion  entangled  in  a  sophistical 
optimism.  Never  did  it  conceive  that  the 
most  complete  final  deliverance  and  triumph 
would  justify  the  evils  which  they  abolished. 
As  William  James  put  it,  in  his  picturesque 
manner,  if  at  the  last  day  all  creation  was 
shouting  hallelujah  and  there  remained  one 
cockroach  with  an  unrequited  love,  that 
would  spoil  the  universal  harmony  ;  it  would 
spoil  it,  he  meant,  in  truth  and  for  the  tender 
philosopher,  but  probably  not  for  those 
excited  saints.  James  was  thinking  chiefly 
of  the   present   and   future,   but   the   same 


JOSIAH  ROYCE  109 

scrupulous  charity  has  its  apphcation  to  the 
past.  To  remove  an  evil  is  not  to  remove 
the  fact  that  it  has  existed.  The  tears  that 
have  been  shed  were  shed  in  bitterness,  even 
if  a  remorseful  hand  afterwards  wipes  them 
away.  To  be  patted  on  the  back  and  given 
a  sugar-plum  does  not  reconcile  even  a  child 
to  a  past  injustice.  And  the  case  is  much 
worse  if  we  are  expected  to  make  our  heaven 
out  of  the  foolish  and  cruel  pleasures  of 
contrast,  or  out  of  the  pathetic  offuscation 
produced  by  a  great  relief.  Such  a  heaven 
would  be  a  lie,  like  the  sardonic  heavens  of 
Calvin  and  Hegel.  The  existence  of  any  evil 
anywhere  at  any  time  absolutely  ruins  a  total 
optimism. 

Nevertheless  philosophers  have  always 
had  a  royal  road  to  complete  satisfaction. 
One  of  the  purest  of  pleasures,  which  they 
cultivate  above  all  others,  is  the  pleasure  of 
understanding.  Now,  as  playwrights  and 
novelists  know,  the  intellect  is  no  less  readily 
or  agreeably  employed  in  understanding  evil 
than  in  understanding  good  —  more  so,  in 
fact,  if  in  the  intellectual  man,  besides  his 
intelligence,  theiie  is  a  strain  of  coarseness, 
irony,  or  desire  to  belittle  the  good  things 


no     CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

others  possess  and  he  himself  has  missed. 
Sometimes  the  philosopher,  even  when  above 
all  meanness,  becomes  so  devoted  a  naturalist 
that  he  is  ashamed  to  remain  a  moralist, 
although  this  is  what  he  probably  was  in  the 
beginning ;  and  where  all  is  one  vast  cataract 
of  events,  he  feels  it  would  be  impertinent  of 
him  to  divide  them  censoriously  into  things 
that  ought  to  be  and  things  that  ought  not 
to  be.  He  may  even  go  one  step  farther. 
Awestruck  and  humbled  before  the  universe, 
he  may  insensibly  transform  his  understand- 
ing and  admiration  of  it  into  the  assertion 
that  the  existence  of  evil  is  no  evil  at  all, 
but  that  the  order  of  the  universe  is  in  every 
detail  necessary  and  perfect,  so  that  the 
mere  mention  of  the  word  evil  is  blind  and 
blasphemous. 

This  sentiment,  which  as  much  as  any 
other  deserves  the  name  of  pantheism,  is 
often  expressed  incoherently  and  with  a  false 
afflatus  ;  but  when  rationally  conceived,  as 
it  was  by  Spinoza,  it  amounts  to  this  :  that 
good  and  evil  are  relations  which  things  bear 
to  the  living  beings  they  affect.  In  itself 
nothing — much  less  this  whole  mixed  universe 
— can  be  either  good  or  bad  ;  but  the  universe 


JOSIAH  ROYCE  111 

wears  the  aspect  of  a  good  in  so  far  as  it 
feeds,  delights,  or  otherwise  fosters  any 
creature  within  it.  If  we  define  the  intellect 
as  the  power  to  see  things  as  they  are,  it  is 
clear  that  in  so  far  as  the  philosopher  is  a 
pure  intellect  the  universe  will  be  a  pure  good 
to  the  philosopher ;  everything  in  it  will 
give  play  to  his  exclusive  passion.  Wisdom 
counsels  us  therefore  to  become  philosophers 
and  to  concentrate  our  lives  as  much  as 
possible  in  pure  intelligence,  that  we  may  be 
led  by  it  into  the  ways  of  peace.  Not  that 
the  universe  will  be  proved  thereby  to  be 
intrinsically  good  (although  in  the  heat  of 
their  intellectual  egotism  philosophers  are 
sometimes  betrayed  into  saying  so),  but  that 
it  will  have  become  in  that  measure  a  good 
to  us,  and  we  shall  be  better  able  to  live 
happily  and  freely  in  it.  If  intelligibility 
appears  in  things,  it  does  so  like  beauty  or 
use,  because  the  mind  of  man,  in  so  far  as  it 
is  adapted  to  them,  finds  its  just  exercise  in 
their  society. 

This  is  an  ancient,  shrewd,  and  inex- 
pugnable position.  If  Royce  had  been  able 
to  adhere  to  it  consistently,  he  would  have 
avoided  his  gratuitous  problem  of  evil  with- 


112      CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

out,  I  think,  doing  violence  to  the  sanest 
element  in  his  natural  piety,  which  was  joy- 
in  the  hard  truth,  with  a  touch  of  humour 
and  scorn  in  respect  to  mortal  illusions. 
There  was  an  observant  and  docile  side  to 
him  ;  and  as  a  child  likes  to  see  things  work, 
he  liked  to  see  processions  of  facts  marching 
on  ironically,  whatever  we  might  say  about 
it.  This  was  his  sense  of  the  power  of  God. 
It  attached  him  at  first  to  Spinoza  and  later 
to  mathematical  logic.  No  small  part  of  his 
life-long  allegiance  to  the  Absolute  responded 
to  this  sentiment. 

The  outlook,  however,  was  complicated 
and  half  reversed  for  him  by  the  transcen- 
dental theory  of  knowledge  which  he  had 
adopted.  This  theory  regards  all  objects, 
including  the  universe,  as  merely  terms 
posited  by  the  will  of  the  thinker,  according 
to  a  definite  grammar  of  thought  native  to 
his  mind.  In  order  that  his  thoughts  may 
be  addressed  to  any  particular  object,  he 
must  first  choose  and  create  it  of  his  own 
accord  ;  otherwise  his  opinions,  not  being 
directed  upon  any  object  in  particular  within 
his  ken,  cannot  be  either  true  or  false,  what- 
ever picture  they  may  frame.     What  any- 


JOSIAH  ROYCE  113 

thing  external  may  happen  to  be,  when  we 
do  not  mean  to  speak  of  it,  is  irrelevant  to 
our  discourse.  If,  for  instance,  the  real 
Royce  were  not  a  denizen  and  product  of  my 
mind  —  of  my  deeper  self — I  could  not  so 
much  as  have  a  wrong  idea  of  him.  The 
need  of  this  initial  relevance  in  our  judgements 
seems  to  the  transcendentalist  to  drive  all 
possible  objects  into  the  fold  of  his  secret 
thoughts,  so  that  he  has  two  minds,  one  that 
seeks  the  facts  and  another  that  already 
possesses  or  rather  constitutes  them. 

Pantheism,  when  this  new  philosophy  of 
knowledge  is  adopted,  seems  at  first  to  lose 
its  foundations.  There  is  no  longer  an 
external  universe  to  which  to  bow  ;  no  little 
corner  left  for  us  in  the  infinite  where,  after 
making  the  great  sacrifice,  we  may  build  a 
safe  nest.  The  intellect  to  which  we  had 
proudly  reduced  ourselves  has  lost  its  pre- 
eminence ;  it  can  no  longer  be  called  the 
faculty  of  seeing  things  as  they  are.  It  has 
become  what  psychological  critics  of  intel- 
lectualism,  such  as  William  James,  under- 
stand by  it :  a  mass  of  human  propensities 
to  abstraction,  construction,  belief,  or  infer- 
ence, by  which  imaginary  things  and  truths 


114     CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

are  posited  in  the  service  of  life.  It  is  there- 
fore on  the  same  plane  exactly  as  passion, 
music,  or  aesthetic  taste  :  a  mental  compli- 
cation which  may  be  an  index  to  other 
psychological  facts  connected  with  it  genetic- 
ally, but  which  has  no  valid  intent,  no 
ideal  transcendence,  no  assertive  or  cognitive 
function.  Intelligence  so  conceived  under- 
stands nothing  :  it  is  a  buzzing  labour  in  the 
fancy  which,  by  some  obscure  causation, 
helps  us  to  live  on. 

To  discredit  the  intellect,  to  throw  off 
the  incubus  of  an  external  reality  or  truth, 
was  one  of  the  boons  which  transcendentalism 
in  its  beginnings  brought  to  the  romantic 
soul.  But  although  at  first  the  sense  of  relief 
(to  Fichte,  for  instance)  was  most  exhilarat- 
ing, the  freedom  achieved  soon  proved 
illusory  :  the  terrible  Absolute  had  been 
simply  transplanted  into  the  self.  You  were 
your  own  master,  and  omnipotent ;  but  you 
were  no  less  dark,  hostile,  and  inexorable  to 
yourself  than  the  gods  of  Calvin  or  of  Spinoza 
had  been  before.  Since  every  detail  of  this 
mock  world  was  your  secret  work,  you  were 
not  only  wiser  but  also  more  criminal  than 
you  knew.     You  were  stifled,  even  more  than 


JOSIAH  ROYCE  115 

formerly,  in  the  arms  of  nature,  in  the  toils 
of  your  own  unaccountable  character,  which 
made  your  destiny.  Royce  never  recoiled 
from  paradox  or  from  bitter  fact ;  and  he 
used  to  say  that  a  mouse,  when  tormented 
and  torn  to  pieces  by  a  cat,  was  realising  his 
own  deepest  will,  since  he  had  sub-consciously 
chosen  to  be  a  mouse  in  a  world  that  should 
have  cats  in  it.  The  mouse  really,  in  his 
deeper  self,  wanted  to  be  terrified,  clawed, 
and  devoured.  Royce  was  superficially  a 
rationalist,  with  no  tenderness  for  supersti- 
tion in  detail  and  not  much  sympathy  with 
civilised  religions  ;  but  we  see  here  that  in 
his  heart  he  was  loyal  to  the  aboriginal 
principle  of  all  superstition  :  reverence  for 
what  hurts.  He  said  to  himself  that 
in  so  far  as  God  was  the  devil — as  daily 
experience  and  Hegelian  logic  proved  was 
largely  the  case — devil-worship  was  true 
religion. 

A  protest,  however,  arose  in  his  own  mind 
against  this  doctrine.  Strong  early  bonds 
attached  him  to  moralism — to  the  opinion  of 
the  Stoics  and  of  Kant  that  virtue  is  the  only 
good.  Yet  if  virtue  were  conceived  after 
their  manner,   as  a  heroic  and  sublimated 


116     CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

attitude  of  the  will,  of  which  the  world  hardly 
afforded  any  example,  how  should  the  whole 
whirligig  of  life  be  good  also  ?  How  should 
moralism,  that  frowns  on  this  wicked  world, 
be  reconciled  with  pantheism  and  optimism, 
that  hug  it  to  their  bosom  ?  By  the  in- 
genious if  rather  melodramatic  notion  that 
we  should  hug  it  with  a  bear's  hug,  that 
virtue  consisted  (as  Royce  often  put  it)  in 
holding  evil  by  the  throat ;  so  that  the  world 
was  good  because  it  was  a  good  world  to 
strangle,  and  if  we  only  managed  to  do  so, 
the  more  it  deserved  strangling  the  better 
world  it  was.  But  this  Herculean  feat  must 
not  be  considered  as  something  to  accom- 
plish once  for  all ;  the  labours  of  Hercules 
must  be  not  twelve  but  infinite,  since  his 
virtue  consisted  in  performing  them,  and  if 
he  ever  rested  or  was  received  into  Olympus 
he  would  have  left  virtue — the  only  good — 
behind.  The  wickedness  of  the  world  was 
no  reason  for  quitting  it ;  on  the  contrary, 
it  invited  us  to  plunge  into  all  its  depths  and 
live  through  every  phase  of  it ;  virtue  was 
severe  but  not  squeamish.  It  lived  by  end- 
less effort,  turbid  vitality,  and  Sturm  und 
Drang.     Moralism  and  an  apology  for  evil 


JOSIAH  ROYCE  117 

could  thus  be  reconciled  and  merged  in  the 
praises  of  tragic  experience. 

This  had  been  the  burden  of  Hegel's 
philosophy  of  life,  which  Royce  admired  and 
adopted.  Hegel  and  his  followers  seem  to 
be  fond  of  imagining  that  they  are  moving 
in  a  tragedy.  But  because  Aeschylus  and 
Sophocles  were  great  poets,  does  it  follow 
that  life  would  be  cheap  if  it  did  not  re- 
semble their  fables  ?  The  life  of  tragic 
heroes  is  not  good ;  it  is  misguided,  un- 
necessary, and  absurd.  Yet  that  is  what 
romantic  philosophy  would  condemn  us  to  ; 
we  must  all  strut  and  roar.  We  must  lend 
ourselves  to  the  partisan  earnestness  of 
persons  and  nations  calling  their  rivals 
villains  and  themselves  heroes;  but  this 
earnestness  will  be  of  the  histrionic  German 
sort,  made  to  order  and  transferable  at  short 
notice  from  one  object  to  another,  since 
what  truly  matters  is  not  that  we  should 
achieve  our  ostensible  aim  (which  Hegel 
contemptuously  called  ideal)  but  that  we 
should  carry  on  perpetually,  if  possible  with 
a  crescendo,  the  strenuous  experience  of 
living  in  a  glorigusly  bad  world,  and  always 
working  to  reform  it,  with  the  comforting 


118     CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

speculative  assurance  that  we  never  can 
succeed.  We  never  can  succeed,  I  mean, 
in  rendering  reform  less  necessary  or  life 
happier ;  but  of  course  in  any  specific 
reform  we  may  succeed  half  the  time,  thereby 
sowing  the  seeds  of  new  and  higher  evils,  to 
keep  the  edge  of  virtue  keen.  And  in  reality 
we,  or  the  Absolute  in  us,  are  succeeding  all 
the  time  ;  the  play  is  always  going  on,  and 
the  play's  the  thing. 

It  was  inevitable  that  Royce  should  have 
been  at  home  only  in  this  circle  of  Pro- 
testant and  German  intuitions ;  a  more 
refined  existence  would  have  seemed  to  him 
to  elude  moral  experience.  Although  he  was 
born  in  California  he  had  never  got  used 
to  the  sunshine  ;  he  had  never  tasted  peace. 
His  spirit  was  that  of  courage  and  labour. 
He  was  tender  in  a  bashful  way,  as  if  in 
tenderness  there  was  something  pathological, 
as  indeed  to  his  sense  there  was,  since  he 
conceived  love  and  loyalty  to  be  divine 
obsessions  refusing  to  be  rationalised  ;  he 
saw  their  essence  in  the  child  who  clings  to 
an  old  battered  doll  rather  than  accept  a 
new  and  better  one.  Following  orthodox 
tradition  in  philosophy,  he  insisted  on  seeing 


JOSIAH  ROYCE  119 

reason  at  the  bottom  of  things  as  well  as 
at  the  top,  so  that  he  never  could  under- 
stand either  the  root  or  the  flower  of 
anything.  He  watched  the  movement  of 
events  as  if  they  were  mysterious  music, 
and  instead  of  their  causes  and  potentialities 
he  tried  to  divine  their  motif.  On  current 
affairs  his  judgements  were  highly  seasoned 
and  laboriously  wise.  If  anything  escaped 
him,  it  was  only  the  simplicity  of  what  is 
best.  His  reward  was  that  he  became  a 
prophet  to  a  whole  class  of  earnest,  troubled 
people  who,  having  discarded  doctrinal  re- 
ligion, wished  to  think  their  life  worth  living 
when,  to  look  at  what  it  contained,  it  might 
not  have  seemed  so  ;  it  reassured  them  to 
learn  that  a  strained  and  joyless  existence 
was  not  their  unlucky  lot,  or  a  consequence 
of  their  solemn  folly,  but  was  the  necessary 
fate  of  all  good  men  and  angels.  Royce  had 
always  experienced  and  seen  about  him  a 
groping,  burdened,  mediocre  life  ;  he  had 
observed  how  fortune  is  continually  lying 
in  ambush  for  us,  in  order  to  bring  good 
out  of  evil  and  evil  out  of  good.  In  his 
age  and  country  all  was  change,  prepara- 
tion, hurry,  material  achievement ;    nothing 


120     CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

was  an  old  and  sufficient  possession  ;  no- 
where, or  very  much  in  the  background,  any 
leisure,  simplicity,  security,  or  harmony. 
The  whole  scene  was  filled  with  arts  and 
virtues  which  were  merely  useful  or  re- 
medial. The  most  pressing  arts,  like  war 
and  forced  labour,  presuppose  evil,  work  im- 
mense havoc,  and  take  the  place  of  greater 
possible  goods.  The  most  indispensable 
virtues,  like  courage  and  industry,  do  like- 
wise. But  these  seemed  in  Royce's  world 
the  only  honourable  things,  and  he  took 
them  to  be  typical  of  all  art  and  virtue — 
a  tremendous  error.  It  is  very  true,  how- 
ever, that  in  the  welter  of  material  existence 
no  concrete  thing  can  be  good  or  evil  in 
every  respect ;  and  so  long  as  our  rough 
arts  and  virtues  do  more  good  than  harm 
we  give  them  honourable  names,  such  as 
unselfishness,  patriotism,  or  religion ;  and 
it  remains  a  mark  of  good  breeding  among 
us  to  practise  them  instinctively.  But  an 
absolute  love  of  such  forced  arts  and  impure 
virtues  is  itself  a  vice  ;  it  is,  as  the  case 
may  be,  barbarous,  vain,  or  fanatical.  It 
mistakes  something  specific — some  habit  or 
emotion  which  may  be   or   may  have   been 


JOSIAH  ROYCE  121 

good  in  some  respect,  or  under  some  circum- 
stances the  lesser  of  two  evils — for  the  very 
principle  of  excellence.  But  good  and  evil, 
like  light  and  shade,  are  ethereal ;  all  things, 
events,  persons,  and  conventional  virtues 
are  in  themselves  utterly  valueless,  save  as 
an  immaterial  harmony  (of  which  mind  is 
an  expression)  plays  about  them  on  occasion, 
when  their  natures  meet  propitiously,  and 
bathes  them  in  some  tint  of  happiness  or 
beauty.  This  immaterial  harmony  may  be 
made  more  and  more  perfect ;  the  difficulties 
in  the  w^ay  of  perfection,  either  in  man,  in 
society,  or  in  universal  nature,  are  physical 
not  logical.  Worship  of  barbarous  virtue  is 
the  blackest  conservatism ;  it  shuts  the 
gate  of  heaven,  and  surrenders  existence  to 
perpetual  follies  and  crimes.  Moralism  it- 
self is  a  superstition.  In  its  abstract  form 
it  is  moral,  too  moral ;  it  adores  the  con- 
ventional conscience,  or  perhaps  a  morbid 
one.  In  its  romantic  form,  moralism  be- 
comes barbarous  and  actually  immoral ;  it 
obstinately  craves  action  and  stress  for 
their  own  sake,  experience  in  the  gross,  and 
a  good-and-bad  jvay  of  living. 

Royce    sometimes    conceded    that    there 


122     CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

might  be  some  pure  goods,  music,  for  in- 
stance, or  mathematics ;  but  the  impure 
moral  goods  were  better  and  could  not  be 
spared.  Such  a  concession,  however,  if  it 
had  been  taken  to  heart,  would  have  ruined 
his  whole  moral  philosophy.  The  romanti- 
cist must  maintain  that  only  what  is  painful 
can  be  noble  and  only  what  is  lurid  bright. 
A  taste  for  turbid  and  contrasted  values 
would  soon  seem  perverse  when  once  any- 
thing perfect  had  been  seen  and  loved. 
Would  it  not  have  been  better  to  leave  out 
the  worst  of  the  crimes  and  plagues  that 
have  heightened  the  tragic  value  of  the 
world  ?  But  if  so,  why  stop  before  we  had 
deleted  them  all  ?  We  should  presently 
be  horrified  at  the  mere  thought  of  passions 
that  before  had  been  found  necessary  by 
the  barbarous  tragedian  to  keep  his  audience 
awake  ;  and  the  ear  at  the  same  time  would 
become  sensitive  to  a  thousand  harmonies 
that  had  been  inaudible  in  the  hurly-burly  of 
romanticism.  The  romanticist  thinks  he  has 
life  by  virtue  of  his  confusion  and  torment, 
whereas  in  truth  that  torment  and  confusion 
are  his  incipient  death,  and  it  is  only  the 
modicum   of  harmony   he   has   achieved   in 


JOSIAH  ROYCE  123 

his  separate  faculties  that  keeps  him  aUve 
at  all.  As  Aristotle  taught,  unmixed  har- 
mony would  be  intensest  life.  The  spheres 
might  make  a  sweet  and  perpetual  music, 
and  a  happy  God  is  at  least  possible. 

It  was  not  in  this  direction,  however, 
that  Royce  broke  away  on  occasion  from 
his  Hegelian  ethics  ;  he  did  so  in  the  direc- 
tion of  ethical  dogmatism  and  downright 
sincerity.  The  deepest  thing  in  him  per- 
sonally was  conscience,  firm  recognition  of 
duty,  and  the  democratic  and  American 
spirit  of  service.  He  could  not  adopt  a 
moral  bias  histrionically,  after  the  manner 
of  Hegel  or  Nietzsche.  To  those  hardened 
professionals  any  role  was  acceptable,  the 
more  commanding  the  better ;  but  the 
good  Royce  was  like  a  sensitive  amateur, 
refusing  the  role  of  villain,  however  brilliant 
and  necessary  to  the  play.  In  contempt  of 
his  own  speculative  insight,  or  in  an  obedi- 
ence to  it  which  forgot  it  for  the  time  being, 
he  lost  himself  in  his  part,  and  felt  that  it 
was  infinitely  important  to  be  cast  only  for 
the  most  virtuous  of  characters.  He  retained 
inconsistently  \Jcie  Jewish  allegiance  to  a 
God  essentially  the  vindicator  of  only  one 


124      CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

of  the  combatants,  not  in  this  world  often 
the  victor ;  he  could  not  stomach  the  pro- 
vidential scoundrels  which  the  bad  taste  of 
Germany,  and  of  Carlyle  and  Browning, 
was  wont  to  glorify.  The  last  notable  act 
of  his  life  was  an  illustration  of  this,  when 
he  uttered  a  ringing  public  denunciation  of 
the  sinking  of  the  Lusitania.  Orthodox 
Hegelians  might  well  have  urged  that  here, 
if  anywhere,  was  a  plain  case  of  the  pro- 
vidential function  of  what,  from  a  finite 
merely  moral  point  of  view,  was  an  evil  in 
order  to  make  a  higher  good  possible — the 
virtue  of  German  self-assertion  and  of  Ameri- 
can self-assertion  in  antithesis  to  it,  syn- 
thesised  in  the  concrete  good  of  war  and 
victory,  or  in  the  perhaps  more  blessed 
good  of  defeat.  What  could  be  more  un- 
philosophical  and  gedankenlos  than  the  in- 
trusion of  mere  morality  into  the  higher 
idea  of  world-development  ?  Was  not  the 
Universal  Spirit  compelled  to  bifurcate  into 
just  such  Germans  and  just  such  Americans, 
in  order  to  attain  self- consciousness  by 
hating,  fighting  against,  and  vanquishing 
itself  ?  Certainly  it  was  American  duty 
to  be  angry,  as  it  was  German  duty  to  be 


JOSIAH  ROYCE  125 

ruthless.  The  Idea  Hked  to  see  its  fighting- 
cocks  at  it  in  earnest,  since  that  was  what 
it  had  bred  them  for ;  but  both  were  good 
cocks.  Villains,  as  Hegel  had  observed  in 
describing  Greek  tragedy,  were  not  less 
self -justified  than  heroes  ;  they  were  simply 
the  heroes  of  a  lower  stage  of  culture. 
America  and  England  remained  at  the  stage 
of  individualism  ;  Germany  had  advanced 
to  the  higher  stage  of  organisation.  Perhaps 
this  necessary  war  was  destined,  through 
the  apparent  defeat  of  Germany,  to  bring 
England  and  America  up  to  the  German 
level.  Of  course ;  and  yet  somehow,  on 
this  occasion,  Royce  passed  over  these  pro- 
found considerations,  which  life-long  habit 
must  have  brought  to  his  lips.  A  Socratic 
demon  whispered  No,  No  in  his  ear ;  it 
would  have  been  better  for  such  things 
never  to  be.  The  murder  of  those  thousand 
passengers  was  not  a  providential  act,  re- 
quisite to  spread  abroad  a  vitalising  war ; 
it  was  a  crime  to  execrate  altogether.  It 
would  have  been  better  for  Hegel,  or  who- 
ever was  responsible  for  it,  if  a  millstone 
had  been  hanged  about  his  neck  and  he, 
and  not  those  little  ones,  had  been  drowned 


126     CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

at  the  bottom  of  the  sea.  Of  this  terrestrial 
cock-pit  Royce  was  wilHng  to  accept  the 
agony,  but  not  the  ignominy.  The  other 
cock  was  a  wicked  bird. 

This  honest  lapse  from  his  logic  was 
habitual  with  him  at  the  sight  of  sin,  and 
sin  in  his  eyes  was  a  fearful  reality.  His 
conscience  spoiled  the  pantheistic  serenity 
of  his  system  ;  and  what  was  worse  (for  he 
was  perfectly  aware  of  the  contradiction)  it 
added  a  deep,  almost  remorseful  unrest  to 
his  hard  life.  What  calm  could  there  be 
in  the  double  assurance  that  it  was  really 
right  that  things  should  be  wrong,  but  that 
it  was  really  wrong  not  to  strive  to  right 
them  ?  There  was  no  conflict,  he  once 
observed,  between  science  and  religion,  but 
the  real  conflict  was  between  religion  and 
morality.  There  could  indeed  be  no  con- 
flict in  his  mind  between  faith  and  science, 
because  his  faith  began  by  accepting  all 
facts  and  all  scientific  probabilities  in  order 
to  face  them  religiously.  But  there  was  an 
invincible  conflict  between  religion  as  he 
conceived  it  and  morality,  because  morality 
takes  sides  and  regards  one  sort  of  motive 
and  one  kind  of  result  as  better  than  another, 


JOSIAH  ROYCE  127 

whereas  religion  according  to  him  gloried  in 
everything,  even  in  the  evil,  as  fulfilling  the 
will  of  God.  Of  course  the  practice  of 
virtue  was  not  excluded ;  it  was  just  as 
needful  as  evil  was  in  the  scheme  of  the 
whole  ;  but  while  the  effort  of  morality  was 
requisite,  the  judgements  of  morality  were 
absurd.  Now  I  think  we  may  say  that  a 
man  who  finds  himself  in  such  a  position 
has  a  divided  mind,  and  that  while  he  has 
wrestled  with  the  deepest  questions  like  a 
young  giant,  he  has  not  won  the  fight.  I 
mean,  he  has  not  seen  his  way  to  any  one 
of  the  various  possibilities  about  the  nature 
of  things,  but  has  remained  entangled,  sin- 
cerely, nobly,  and  pathetically,  in  contrary 
traditions  stronger  than  himself.  In  the 
goodly  company  of  philosophers  he  is  an 
intrepid  martyr. 

In  metaphysics  as  in  morals  Royce  per- 
petually laboured  the  same  points,  yet  they 
never  became  clear  ;  they  covered  a  natural 
complexity  in  the  facts  which  his  idealism 
could  not  disentangle.  There  was  a  volumin- 
ous confusion  in  his  thought ;  some  clear 
principles  and  ultimate  possibilities  turned 
up  in  it,  now  presenting  one  face  and  now 


128     CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

another,  like  chips  carried  down  a  swollen 
stream ;  but  the  most  powerful  currents  were 
below  the  surface,  and  the  whole  movement 
was  hard  to  trace.  He  had  borrowed  from 
Hegel  a  way  of  conceiving  systems  of  philo- 
sophy, and  also  the  elements  of  his  own 
thought,  which  did  not  tend  to  clarify  them. 
He  did  not  think  of  correcting  what  inco- 
herence there  might  remain  in  any  view, 
and  then  holding  it  in  reserve,  as  one  of  the 
possibilities,  until  facts  should  enable  us  to 
decide  whether  it  was  true  or  not.  In- 
stead he  clung  to  the  incoherence  as  if  it 
had  been  the  heart  of  the  position,  in  order 
to  be  driven  by  it  to  some  other  position 
altogether,  so  that  while  every  view  seemed 
to  be  considered,  criticised,  and  in  a  measure 
retained  (since  the  argument  continued  on 
the  same  lines,  however  ill-chosen  they  might 
have  been  originally),  yet  justice  was  never 
done  to  it ;  it  was  never  clarified,  made 
consistent  with  itself,  and  then  accepted 
or  rejected  in  view  of  the  evidence.  Hence 
a  vicious  and  perplexing  suggestion  that 
philosophies  are  bred  out  of  philosophies, 
not  out  of  men  in  the  presence  of  things. 
Hence  too  a  sophistical  effort  to  find  every- 


JOSIAH  ROYCE  129 

thing  self-contradictory,  and  in  some  dis- 
quieting way  both  true  and  false,  as  if  there 
were  not  an  infinite  number  of  perfectly 
consistent  systems  which  the  world  might 
have  illustrated. 

Consider,  for  instance,  his  chief  and  most 
puzzling  contention,  that  all  minds  are  parts 
of  one  mind.  It  is  easy,  according  to  the 
meaning  we  give  to  the  word  mind,  to  render 
this  assertion  clear  and  true,  or  clear  and 
false,  or  clear  and  doubtful  (because  touch- 
ing unknown  facts),  or  utterly  absurd.  It 
is  obvious  that  all  minds  are  parts  of  one 
flux  or  system  of  experiences,  as  all  bodies 
are  parts  of  one  system  of  bodies.  Again, 
if  mind  is  identified  with  its  objects,  and 
people  are  said  to  be  "  of  one  mind  "  when 
they  are  thinking  of  the  same  thing,  it  is 
certain  that  many  minds  are  often  identical 
in  part,  and  they  would  all  be  identical  with 
portions  of  an  omniscient  mind  that  should 
perceive  all  that  they  severally  experienced. 
The  question  becomes  doubtful  if  what  we 
mean  by  oneness  of  mind  is  unity  of  type  ; 
our  information  or  plausible  guesses  cannot 
assure  us  how  juany  sorts  of  experience 
may  exist,  or  to  what  extent  their  develop- 


130     CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

ment  (when  they  develop)  follows  the  same 
lines  of  evolution.  The  animals  would  have 
to  be  consulted,  and  the  other  planets,  and 
the  infinite  recesses  of  time.  The  strait- 
jacket  which  German  idealism  has  provided 
is  certainly  far  too  narrow  even  for  the 
varieties  of  human  imagination.  Finally, 
the  assertion  becomes  absurd  when  it  is 
understood  to  suggest  that  an  actual  in- 
stance of  thinking,  in  which  something, 
say  the  existence  of  America,  is  absent  or 
denied,  can  be  part  of  another  actual  instance 
of  thinking  in  which  it  is  present  and  asserted. 
But  this  whole  method  of  treating  the 
matter — and  we  might  add  anything  that 
observation  might  warrant  us  in  adding 
about  multiple  personalities — would  leave 
out  the  problem  that  agitated  Royce  and 
that  bewildered  his  readers.  He  wanted 
all  minds  to  be  one  in  some  way  which  should 
be  logically  and  morally  necessary,  and  which 
yet,  as  he  could  not  help  feeling,  was  morally 
and  logically  impossible. 

For  pure  transcendentalism,  which  was 
Royce's  technical  method,  the  question  does 
not  arise  at  all.  Transcendentalism  is  an 
attitude  or  a  point  of  view  rather  than  a 


JOSIAH  ROYCE  181 

system.  Its  Absolute  is  thinking  "  as  such," 
wherever  thought  may  exert  itself.  The 
notion  that  there  are  separate  instances  of 
thought  is  excluded,  because  space,  time, 
and  number  belong  to  the  visionary  world 
posited  by  thought,  not  to  the  function  of 
thinking ;  individuals  are  figments  of  con- 
structive fancy,  as  are  material  objects. 
The  stress  of  moral  being  is  the  same  wher- 
ever it  may  fall,  and  there  are  no  finite 
selves,  or  relations  between  thinkers  ;  also 
no  infinite  self,  because  on  this  principle 
the  Absolute  is  not  an  existent  being,  a 
psychological  monster,  but  a  station  or 
office  ;  its  essence  is  a  task.  Actual  think- 
ing is  therefore  never  a  part  of  the  Absolute, 
but  always  the  Absolute  itself.  Thinkers, 
finite  or  infinite,  would  be  existing  persons 
or  masses  of  feelings  ;  such  things  are  dreamt 
of  only.  Any  system  of  existences,  any  truth 
or  matter  of  fact  waiting  to  be  recognised, 
contradicts  the  transcendental  insight  and 
stultifies  it.  The  all-inclusive  mind  is  my 
mind  as  I  think,  mind  in  its  living  function, 
and  beyond  that  philosophy  cannot  go. 

Royce,  howe^wer,  while  often  reasoning  on 
this  principle,  was  incapable  of  not  going 


132     CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

beyond  it,  or  of  always  remembering  it.  He 
could  not  help  believing  that  constructive 
fancy  not  only  feigns  individuals  and  in- 
stances of  thought,  but  is  actually  seated 
in  them.  The  Absolute,  for  instance,  must 
be  not  merely  the  abstract  subject  or  tran- 
scendental self  in  all  of  us  (although  it  was 
that  too),  but  an  actual  synthetic  universal 
mind,  the  God  of  Aristotle  and  of  Christian 
theology.  Nor  was  it  easy  for  Royce,  a 
sincere  soul  and  a  friend  of  William  James, 
not  to  be  a  social  realist ;  I  mean,  not  to 
admit  that  there  are  many  collateral  human 
minds,  in  temporal  existential  relations  to 
one  another,  any  of  which  may  influence 
another,  but  never  supplant  it  nor  materi- 
ally include  it.  Finite  experience  was  not 
a  mere  element  in  infinite  experience ;  it 
was  a  tragic  totality  in  itself.  I  was  not 
God  looking  at  myself,  I  was  myself  looking 
for  God.  Yet  this  strain  was  utterly  incom- 
patible with  the  principles  of  transcendental- 
ism ;  it  turned  philosophy  into  a  simple 
anticipation  of  science,  if  not  into  an  in- 
dulgence in  literary  psychology.  Knowledge 
would  then  have  been  only  faith  leaping 
across  the  chasm  of  coexistence  and  guessing 


JOSIAH  ROYCE  133 

the  presence  and  nature  of  what  surrounds 
us  by  some  hint  of  material  influence  or 
brotherly  affinity.  Both  the  credulity  and 
the  finality  which  such  naturalism  implies 
were  offensive  to  Royce,  and  contrary  to  his 
sceptical  and  mystical  instincts.  Was  there 
some  middle  course  ? 

The  audience  in  a  theatre  stand  in  a 
transcendental  relation  to  the  persons  and 
events  in  the  play.  The  performance  may 
take  place  to-day  and  last  one  hour,  while 
the  fable  transports  us  to  some  heroic  epoch 
or  to  an  age  that  never  existed,  and  stretches 
through  days  and  perhaps  years  of  fancied 
time.  Just  so  transcendental  thinking, 
while  actually  timeless  and  not  distributed 
among  persons,  might  survey  infinite  time 
and  rehearse  the  passions  and  thoughts  of 
a  thousand  characters.  Thought,  after  all, 
needs  objects,  however  fictitious  and  ideal 
they  may  be  ;  it  could  not  think  if  it  thought 
nothing.  This  indispensable  world  of  ap- 
pearance is  far  more  interesting  than  the 
reality  that  evokes  it ;  the  qualities  and 
divisions  found  in  the  appearance  diversify 
the  monotonoui;  function  of  pure  thinking 
and  render  it  concrete.     Instances  of  thought 


134     CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

and  particular  minds  may  thus  be  intro- 
duced consistently  into  a  transcendental 
system,  provided  they  are  distinguished  not 
by  their  own  times  and  places,  but  only 
by  their  themes.  The  transcendental  mind 
would  be  a  pure  poet,  with  no  earthly  life, 
but  living  only  in  his  works,  and  in  the  times 
and  persons  of  his  fable.  This  view,  firmly 
and  consistently  held,  would  deserve  the 
name  of  absolute  idealism,  which  Royce 
liked  to  give  to  his  own  system.  But  he 
struggled  to  fuse  it  with  social  realism,  with 
which  it  is  radically  incompatible.  Particu- 
lar minds  and  the  whole  process  of  time, 
for  absolute  idealism,  are  ideas  only  ;  they 
are  thought  of  and  surveyed,  they  never 
think  or  lapse  actually.  For  this  reason 
genuine  idealists  can  speak  so  glibly  of  the 
mind  of  a  nation  or  an  age.  It  is  just  as 
real  and  unreal  to  them  as  the  mind  of  an 
individual ;  for  within  the  human  individual 
they  can  trace  unities  that  run  through  and 
beyond  him,  so  that  parts  of  him,  identical 
with  parts  of  other  people,  form  units  as 
living  as  himself;  for  it  is  all  a  web  of 
themes,  not  a  concourse  of  existences.  This 
is  the  very  essence  and  pride  of  idealism, 


JOSIAH  ROYCE  185 

that  knowledge  is  not  knowledge  of  the 
world  but  is  the  world  itself,  and  that  the 
units  of  discourse,  which  are  interwoven  and 
crossed  units,  are  the  only  individuals  in 
being.  You  may  call  them  persons,  because 
"  person  "  means  a  mask  ;  but  you  cannot 
call  them  souls.  They  are  knots  in  the  web 
of  history.  They  are  words  in  their  con- 
text, and  the  only  spirit  in  them  is  the  sense 
they  have  for  me. 

Royce,  however,  in  saying  all  this,  also 
wished  not  to  say  it,  and  his  two  thick  volumes 
on  The  World  and  the  Individual  leave  their 
subject  wrapped  in  utter  obscurity.  Perceiv- 
ing the  fact  when  he  had  finished,  he  very 
characteristically  added  a  "  Supplementary 
Essay"  of  a  hundred  more  pages,  in  finer 
print,  in  which  to  come  to  the  point. 
Imagine,  he  said,  an  absolutely  exhaustive 
map  of  England  spread  out  upon  English 
soil.  The  map  would  be  a  part  of  England, 
yet  would  reproduce  every  feature  of  Eng- 
land, including  itself;  so  that  the  map 
would  reappear  on  a  smaller  scale  within 
itself  an  infinite  number  of  times,  like  a 
mirror  reflected  in  a  mirror.  In  this  way 
we    might   be   individuals   within   a   larger 


136     CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

individual,  and  no  less  actual  and  complete 
than  he.  Does  this  solve  the  problem  ?  If 
we  take  the  illustration  as  it  stands,  there  is 
still  only  one  individual  in  existence,  the 
material  England,  all  the  maps  being  parts 
of  its  single  surface  ;  nor  will  it  at  all  re- 
semble the  maps,  since  it  will  be  washed  by 
the  sea  and  surrounded  by  foreign  nations, 
and  not,  like  the  maps,  by  other  Englands 
enveloping  it.  If,  on  the  contrary,  we  equalise 
the  status  of  all  the  members  of  the  series, 
by  making  it  infinite  in  both  directions,  then 
there  would  be  no  England  at  all,  but  only 
map  within  map  of  England.  There  would 
be  no  absolute  mind  inclusive  but  not 
included,  and  the  Absolute  would  be  the 
series  as  a  whole,  utterly  different  from 
any  of  its  members.  It  would  be  a  series 
while  they  were  maps,  a  truth  while  they 
were  minds  ;  and  if  the  Absolute  from  the 
beginning  had  been  regarded  as  a  truth 
only,  there  never  would  have  been  any 
difficulty  in  the  existence  of  individuals 
under  it.  Moreover,  if  the  individuals  are 
all  exactly  alike,  does  not  their  exact  simi- 
larity defeat  the  whole  purpose  of  the 
speculation,  which  was  to  vindicate  the  equal 


JOSIAH  ROYCE  187 

reality  of  the  whole  and  of  its  limited  parts  ? 
And  if  each  of  us,  living  through  infinite  time, 
goes  through  precisely  the  same  experiences 
as  every  one  else,  why  this  vain  repetition  ? 
Is  it  not  enough  for  this  insatiable  world  to 
live  its  life  once  ?  Why  not  admit  soHpsism 
and  be  true  to  the  transcendental  method  ? 
Because  of  conscience  and  good  sense  ?  But 
then  the  infinite  series  of  maps  is  useless, 
England  is  herself  again,  and  the  prospect 
opens  before  us  of  an  infinite  number  of 
supplementary  essays. 

Royce  sometimes  felt  that  he  might  have 
turned  his  hand  to  other  things  than  philo- 
sophy. He  once  wrote  a  novel,  and  its 
want  of  success  was  a  silent  disappointment 
to  him.  Perhaps  he  might  have  been  a 
great  musician.  Complexity,  repetitions, 
vagueness,  endlessness  are  hardly  virtues 
in  writing  or  thinking,  but  in  music  they 
might  have  swelled  and  swelled  into  a  real 
sublimity,  all  the  more  that  he  was  patient, 
had  a  voluminous  meandering  memory,  and 
loved  technical  devices.  But  rather  than 
a  musician — for  he  was  no  artist — he  re- 
sembled some  •  great-hearted  mediaeval 
peasant    visited    by    mystical    promptings, 


138     CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

whom  the  monks  should  have  adopted  and 
allowed  to  browse  among  their  theological 
folios  ;  a  Duns  Scotus  earnest  and  studious 
to  a  fault,  not  having  the  lightness  of  soul 
to  despise  those  elaborate  sophistries,  yet 
minded  to  ferret  out  their  secret  for  himself 
and  walk  by  his  inward  light.  His  was  a 
gothic  and  scholastic  spirit,  intent  on  devis- 
ing and  solving  puzzles,  and  honouring  God 
in  systematic  works,  like  the  coral  insect  or 
the  spider ;  eventually  creating  a  fabric 
that  in  its  homely  intricacy  and  fulness 
arrested  and  moved  the  heart,  the  web  of  it 
was  so  vast,  and  so  full  of  mystery  and 
yearning. 


CHAPTER  V 

LATER   SPECULATIONS 

A  QUESTION  which  is  curious  in  itself  and 
may  become  important  in  the  future  is  this  : 
How  has  migration  to  the  new  world  affected 
philosophical  ideas  ?  At  first  sight  we  might 
be  tempted,  perhaps,  to  dismiss  this  question 
altogether,  on  the  ground  that  no  such  effect 
is  discernible.  For  what  do  we  find  in 
America  in  the  guise  of  philosophy  ?  In  the 
background,  the  same  Protestant  theology  as 
in  Europe  and  the  same  Catholic  theology  ; 
on  the  surface,  the  same  adoption  of  German 
idealism,  the  same  vogue  of  evolution,  the 
same  psychology  becoming  metaphysics, 
and  lately  the  same  revival  of  a  mathemati- 
cal or  logical  realism.  In  no  case  has  the 
first  expression  of  these  various  tendencies 
appeared  in  America,  and  no  original  system 
that  I  know  of  has  arisen  there.     It  would 

188 


140     CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

seem,  then,  that  in  philosophy,  as  in  letters 
generally,  polite  America  has  continued  the 
common  tradition  of  Christendom,  in  paths 
closely  parallel  to  those  followed  in  England  ; 
and  that  modern  speculation,  which  is  so  very 
sensitive  to  changed  times,  is  quite  indifferent 
to  distinctions  of  place. 

Perhaps ;  but  I  say  advisedly  polite 
America,  for  without  this  qualification  what 
I  have  been  suggesting  would  hardly  be  true. 
Polite  America  carried  over  its  household 
gods  from  puritan  England  in  a  spirit  of  con- 
secration, and  it  has  always  wished  to  remain 
in  communion  with  whatever  its  conscience 
might  value  in  the  rest  of  the  world.  Yet 
it  has  been  cut  off  by  distance  and  by  revolu- 
tionary prejudice  against  things  ancient  or 
foreign  ;  and  it  has  been  disconcerted  at  the 
same  time  by  the  insensible  shifting  of  the 
ground  under  its  feet :  it  has  suffered  from 
in-breeding  and  anaemia.  On  the  other  hand, 
a  crude  but  vital  America  has  sprung  up 
from  the  soil,  undermining,  feeding,  and 
transforming  the  America  of  tradition. 

This  young  America  was  originally  com- 
posed of  all  the  prodigals,  truants,  and  ad- 
venturous spirits  that  the  colonial  families 


LATER  SPECULATIONS  141 

produced  :  it  was  fed  continually  by  the 
younger  generation,  born  in  a  spacious,  half- 
empty  world,  tending  to  forget  the  old 
straitened  morality  and  to  replace  it  by 
another,  quite  jovially  human.  This  truly 
native  America  was  reinforced  by  the  miscel- 
lany of  Europe  arriving  later,  not  in  the  hope 
of  founding  a  godly  commonwealth,  but  only 
of  prospering  in  an  untrammelled  one.  The 
horde  of  immigrants  eagerly  accepts  the 
external  arrangements  and  social  spirit  of 
American  life,  but  never  hears  of  its  original 
austere  principles,  or  relegates  them  to  the 
same  willing  oblivion  as  it  does  the  constraints 
which  it  has  just  escaped — Jewish,  Irish, 
German,  Italian,  or  whatever  they  may  be. 
We  should  be  seriously  deceived  if  we  over- 
looked for  a  moment  the  curious  and  complex 
relation  between  these  two  Americas. 

Let  me  give  one  illustration.  Professor 
Norton,  the  friend  of  Carlyle,  of  Burne- Jones, 
and  of  Matthew  Arnold,  and,  for  the  matter 
of  that,  the  friend  of  everybody,  a  most 
urbane,  learned,  and  exquisite  spirit,  was 
descended  from  a  long  line  of  typical  New 
England  divines  :.  yet  he  was  loudly  accused, 
in  public  and  in  private,  of  being  un-American. 


142     CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

On  the  other  hand,  a  Frenchman  of  ripe  judge- 
ment, who  knew  him  perfectly,  once  said  to 
me  :  "  Norton  wouldn't  like  to  hear  it,  but  he 
is  a  terrible  Yankee."  Both  judgements 
were  well  grounded.  Professor  Norton's  mind 
was  deeply  moralised,  discriminating,  and  sad ; 
and  these  qualities  rightly  seemed  American 
to  the  French  observer  of  New  England, 
but  they  rightly  seemed  un-American  to 
the  politician  from  Washington. 

Philosophical  opinion  in  America  is  of 
course  rooted  in  the  genteel  tradition.  It  is 
either  inspired  by  religious  faith,  and  designed 
to  defend  it,  or  else  it  is  created  somewhat 
artificially  in  the  larger  universities,  by 
deliberately  proposing  problems  which,  with- 
out being  very  pressing  to  most  Americans, 
are  supposed  to  be  necessary  problems  of 
thought.  Yet  if  you  expected  academic 
philosophers  in  America,  because  the  back- 
ground of  their  minds  seems  perfunctory,  to 
resemble  academic  philosophers  elsewhere, 
you  would  be  often  mistaken.  There  is  no 
prig's  paradise  in  those  regions.  Many  of 
the  younger  professors  of  philosophy  are  no 
longer  the  sort  of  persons  that  might  as  well 
have  been  clergymen  or  schoolmasters  :  they 


LATER  SPECULATIONS  143 

have  rather  the  type  of  mind  of  a  doctor,  an 
engineer,  or  a  social  reformer ;  the  wide- 
awake young  man  who  can  do  most  things 
better  than  old  people,  and  who  knows  it. 
He  is  less  eloquent  and  apostolic  than  the 
older  generation  of  philosophers,  very  pro- 
fessional in  tone  and  conscious  of  his  Fach ; 
not  that  he  would  deny  for  a  moment  the 
many-sided  ignorance  to  which  nowadays  we 
are  all  reduced,  but  that  he  thinks  he  can  get 
on  very  well  without  the  things  he  ignores. 
His  education  has  been  more  pretentious 
than  thorough ;  his  style  is  deplorable ; 
social  pressure  and  his  own  great  eagerness 
have  condemned  him  to  over- work,  committee 
meetings,  early  marriage,  premature  author- 
ship, and  lecturing  two  or  three  times  a  day 
under  forced  draught.  He  has  no  peace  in 
himself,  no  window  open  to  a  calm  horizon, 
and  in  his  heart  perhaps  little  taste  for  mere 
scholarship  or  pure  speculation.  Yet,  like 
the  plain  soldier  staggering  under  his  clumsy 
equipment,  he  is  cheerful ;  he  keeps  his  faith 
in  himself  and  in  his  allotted  work,  puts  up 
with  being  toasted  only  on  one  side,  remains 
open-minded,  whole-hearted,  appreciative, 
helpful,  confident  of  the  future  of  goodness 


144     CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

and  of  science.  In  a  word,  he  is  a  cell  in  that 
teeming  democratic  body  ;  he  draws  from 
its  warm,  contagious  activities  the  sanctions 
of  his  own  life  and,  less  consciously,  the  spirit 
of  his  philosophy. 

It  is  evident  that  such  minds  will  have 
but  a  loose  hold  on  tradition,  even  on  the 
genteel  tradition  in  American  philosophy. 
Not  that  in  general  they  oppose  or  dislike  it ; 
their  alienation  from  it  is  more  radical ;  they 
forget  it.  Religion  was  the  backbone  of  that 
tradition,  and  towards  religion,  in  so  far  as 
it  is  a  private  sentiment  or  presumption, 
they  feel  a  tender  respect ;  but  in  so  far  as 
religion  is  a  political  institution,  seeking  to 
coerce  the  mind  and  the  conscience,  one 
would  think  they  had  never  heard  of  it. 
They  feel  it  is  as  much  every  one's  right  to 
choose  and  cherish  a  religion  as  to  choose  and 
cherish  a  wife,  without  having  his  choice 
rudely  commented  upon  in  public.  Hitherto 
America  has  been  the  land  of  universal  good- 
will, confidence  in  life,  inexperience  of  poisons. 
Until  yesterday  it  believed  itself  immune 
from  the  hereditary  plagues  of  mankind.  It 
could  not  credit  the  danger  of  being  suffocated 
or  infected  by  any  sinister  principle.     The 


LATER  SPECULATIONS  145 

more  errors  and  passions  were  thrown  into 
the  melting-pot,  the  more  certainly  would 
they  neutralise  one  another  and  would  truth 
come  to  the  top.  Every  system  was  met 
with  a  frank  gaze.  "  Come  on,"  people 
seemed  to  say  to  it,  "  show  us  what  you  are 
good  for.  We  accept  no  claims  ;  we  ask  for 
no  credentials ;  we  just  give  you  a  chance. 
Plato,  the  Pope,  and  Mrs.  Eddy  shall  have 
one  vote  each."  After  all,  I  am  not  sure 
that  this  toleration  without  deference  is  not 
a  cruel  test  for  systematic  delusions  :  it  lets 
the  daylight  into  the  stage. 

Philosophic  tradition  in  America  has 
merged  almost  completely  in  German  ideal- 
ism. In  a  certain  sense  this  system  did  not 
need  to  be  adopted  :  something  very  like 
it  had  grown  up  spontaneously  in  New 
England  in  the  form  of  transcendentalism 
and  unitarian  theology.  Even  the  most 
emancipated  and  positivistic  of  the  latest 
thinkers — pragmatists,  new  realists,  pure  em- 
piricists— have  been  bred  in  the  atmosphere 
of  German  idealism  ;  and  this  fact  should 
not  be  forgotten  in  approaching  their  views. 
The  element  of  this  philosophy  which  has 
sunk  deepest,  and  which  is  reinforced  by  the 


146     CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

influence  of  psychology,  is  the  critical  attitude 
towards  knowledge,  subjectivism,  withdrawal 
into  experience,  on  the  assumption  that 
experience  is  something  substantial.  Ex- 
perience was  regarded  by  earlier  empiricists 
as  a  method  for  making  real  discoveries,  a 
safer  witness  than  reasoning  to  what  might 
exist  in  nature  ;  but  now  experience  is  taken 
to  be  in  itself  the  only  real  existence,  the 
ultimate  object  that  all  thought  and  theory 
must  regard.  This  empiricism  does  not  look 
to  the  building  up  of  science,  but  rather  to  a 
more  thorough  criticism  and  disintegration 
of  conventional  beliefs,  those  of  empirical 
science  included.  It  is  in  the  intrepid  prose- 
cution of  this  criticism  and  disintegration 
that  American  philosophy  has  won  its  wings. 
It  may  seem  a  strange  Nemesis  that  a 
critical  philosophy,  which  on  principle  reduces 
everything  to  the  consciousness  of  it,  should 
end  by  reducing  consciousness  itself  to  other 
things  ;  yet  the  path  of  this  boomerang  is 
not  hard  to  trace.  The  word  consciousness 
originally  meant  what  Descartes  called 
thought  or  cogitation — the  faculty  which 
attention  has  of  viewing  together  objects 
which  may  belong  together  neither  in  their 


LATER  SPECULATIONS  147 

logical  essence  nor  in  their  natural  existence. 
It  colours  events  with  memories  and  facts 
with  emotions,  and  adds  images  to  words. 
This  synthetic  and  transitive  function  of 
consciousness  is  a  positive  fact  about  it,  to 
be  discovered  by  study,  like  any  other  some- 
what recondite  fact.  You  will  discover  it  if 
you  institute  a  careful  comparison  and  con- 
trast between  the  way  things  hang  together 
in  thought  and  the  way  they  hang  together 
in  nature.  To  have  discerned  the  wonderful 
perspectives  both  of  imagination  and  of  will 
seems  to  me  the  chief  service  done  to  philo- 
sophy by  Kant  and  his  followers.  It  is  the 
positive,  the  non-malicious  element  in  their 
speculation ;  and  in  the  midst  of  their 
psychologism  in  logic  and  their  egotism  about 
nature  and  history,  consciousness  seems  to 
be  the  one  province  of  being  which  they  have 
thrown  true  light  upon.  But  just  because 
this  is  a  positive  province  of  being,  an  actual 
existence  to  be  discovered  and  dogmatically 
believed  in,  it  is  not  what  a  malicious  criticism 
of  knowledge  can  end  with.  Not  the  nature 
of  consciousness,  but  the  data  of  conscious- 
ness, are  what  the  critic  must  fall  back  upon 
in  the  last  resort ;    and  Hume  had  been  in 


148     CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

this  respect  a  more  penetrating  critic  than 
Kant.  One  cannot,  by  inspecting  conscious- 
ness, find  consciousness  itself  as  a  passive 
datum,  because  consciousness  is  cogitation ; 
one  can  only  take  note  of  the  immediate 
objects  of  consciousness,  in  such  private 
perspective  as  sense  or  imagination  may 
present. 

Philosophy  seems  to  be  richer  in  theories 
than  in  words  to  express  them  in  ;  and  much 
confusion  results  from  the  necessity  of  using 
old  terms  in  new  meanings.  In  this  way, 
when  consciousness  is  disregarded,  in  the 
proper  sense  of  cogitation,  the  name  of  con- 
sciousness can  be  transferred  to  the  stream 
of  objects  immediately  present  to  conscious- 
ness ;  so  that  consciousness  comes  to  signify 
the  evolving  field  of  appearances  unrolled 
before  any  person. 

This  equivocation  is  favoured  by  the  allied 
ambiguity  of  an  even  commoner  term,  idea. 
It  is  plausible  to  say  that  consciousness  is  a 
stream  of  ideas,  because  an  idea  may  mean 
an  opinion,  a  cogitation,  a  view  taken  of 
some  object.  And  it  is  also  plausible  to  say 
that  ideas  are  objects  of  consciousness,  because 
an  idea  may  mean  an  image,  a  passive  datum. 


LATER  SPECULATIONS  149 

Passive  data  may  be  of  any  sort  you  like — 
things,  qualities,  relations,  propositions — but 
they  are  never  cogitations  ;  and  to  call  them 
consciousness  or  components  of  consciousness 
is  false  and  inexcusable.  The  ideas  that  may 
be  so  called  are  not  these  passive  objects,  but 
active  thoughts.  Indeed,  when  the  psy- 
chological critic  has  made  this  false  step,  he 
is  not  able  to  halt :  his  method  will  carry 
him  presently  from  this  position  to  one  even 
more  paradoxical. 

Is  memory  knowledge  of  a  past  that  is 
itself  absent  and  dead,  or  is  it  a  present 
experience  ?  A  complete  philosophy  would 
doubtless  reply  that  it  is  both  ;  but  psy- 
chological criticism  can  take  cognisance  of 
memory  only  as  a  mass  of  present  images  and 
presumptions.  The  experience  remembered 
may  indeed  be  exactly  recovered  and  be 
present  again ;  but  the  fact  that  it  was 
present  before  cannot  possibly  be  given  now  ; 
it  can  only  be  suggested  and  believed. 

It  is  evident,  therefore,  that  the  historical 
order  in  which  data  flow  is  not  contained 
bodily  in  any  one  of  them.  This  order  is 
conceived  ;  the  liypothesis  is  framed  instinc- 
tively and  instinctively  credited,  but  it  is 


150     CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

only  an  hypothesis.  And  it  is  often  wrong, 
as  is  proved  by  all  the  constitutional  errors 
of  memory  and  legend.  Belief  in  the  order 
of  our  personal  experiences  is  accordingly 
just  as  dogmatic,  daring,  and  realistic  as 
the  parallel  belief  in  a  material  world. 
The  psychological  critic  must  attribute  both 
beliefs  to  a  mere  tendency  to  feign  ;  and  if 
he  is  true  to  his  method  he  must  discard  the 
notion  that  the  objects  of  consciousness  are 
arranged  in  psychological  sequences,  making 
up  separate  minds.  In  other  words,  he  must 
discard  the  notion  of  consciousness,  not  only 
in  the  sense  of  thought  or  cogitation,  but  in 
the  sense  he  himself  had  given  it  of  a  stream 
of  ideas.  Actual  objects,  he  will  now  admit, 
not  without  a  certain  surprise,  are  not  ideas 
at  all :  they  do  not  lie  in  the  mind  (for  there 
is  no  mind  to  be  found)  but  in  the  medium 
that  observably  surrounds  them.  Things 
are  just  what  they  seem  to  be,  and  to  say 
they  are  consciousness  or  compose  a  con- 
sciousness is  absurd.  The  so-called  appear- 
ances, according  to  a  perfected  criticism  of 
knowledge,  are  nothing  private  or  internal ; 
they  are  merely  those  portions  of  external 
objects   which   from  time   to   time   impress 


LATER  SPECULATIONS  151 

themselves  on  somebody's  organs  of  sense 
and  are  responded  to  by  his  nervous  system. 

Such  is  the  doctrine  of  the  new  American 
reahsts,  in  whose  devoted  persons  the  logic 
of  idealism  has  worked  itself  out  and  appro- 
priately turned  idealism  itself  into  its  opposite. 
Consciousness,  they  began  by  saying,  is  merely 
a  stream  of  ideas  ;  but  then  ideas  are  merely 
the  parts  of  objects  which  happen  to  appear 
to  a  given  person ;  but  again,  a  person  (for 
all  you  or  he  can  discover)  is  nothing  but  his 
body  and  those  parts  of  other  objects  which 
appear  to  him  ;  and,  finally,  to  appear,  in  any 
discoverable  sense,  cannot  be  to  have  a  ghostly 
sort  of  mental  existence,  but  merely  to  be 
reacted  upon  by  an  animal  body.  Thus  we 
come  to  the  conclusion  that  objects  alone 
exist,  and  that  consciousness  is  a  name  for 
certain  segments  or  groups  of  these  objects. 

I  think  we  may  conjecture  why  this 
startling  conclusion,  that  consciousness  does 
not  exist,  a  conclusion  suggested  somewhat 
hurriedly  by  William  James,  has  found  a 
considerable  echo  in  America,  and  why  the 
system  of  Avenarius,  which  makes  in  the 
same  direction,  has  been  studied  there  sym- 
pathetically.     To  deny  consciousness   is  to 


152     CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

deny  a  pre-requisite  to  the  obvious,  and  to 
leave  the  obvious  standing  alone.  That  is  a 
relief  to  an  overtaxed  and  self-impeded 
generation  ;  it  seems  a  blessed  simplification. 
It  gets  rid  of  the  undemocratic  notion  that 
by  being  very  reflective,  circumspect,  and 
subtle  you  might  discover  something  that 
most  people  do  not  see.  They  can  go  on 
more  merrily  with  their  work  if  they  believe 
that  by  being  so  subtle,  circumspect,  and 
reflective  you  would  only  discover  a  mare's 
nest.  The  elimination  of  consciousness  not 
only  restores  the  obvious,  but  proves  all 
parts  of  the  obvious  to  be  equally  real.  Not 
only  colours,  beauties,  and  passions,  but  all 
things  formerly  suspected  of  being  creatures 
of  thought,  such  as  laws,  relations,  and 
abstract  qualities,  now  become  components 
of  the  existing  object,  since  there  is  no  longer 
any  mental  vehicle  by  which  they  might 
have  been  created  and  interposed.  The 
young  American  is  thus  reassured  :  his  joy 
in  living  and  learning  is  no  longer  chilled  by 
the  contempt  which  idealism  used  to  cast 
on  nature  for  being  imaginary  and  on  science 
for  being  intellectual.  All  fictions  and  all 
abstractions  are  now  declared  to  be  parcels 


LATER  SPECULATIONS  153 

of  the  objective  world  ;  it  will  suffice  to  live 
on,  to  live  forward,  in  order  to  see  everything 
as  it  really  is. 

If  we  look  now  at  these  matters  from  a 
slightly  different  angle,  we  shall  find  psy- 
chological criticism  transforming  the  notion 
of  truth  much  as  it  has  transformed  the  notion 
of  consciousness.  In  the  first  place,  there  is 
a  similar  ambiguity  in  the  term.  The  truth 
properly  means  the  sum  of  all  true  proposi- 
tions, what  omniscience  would  assert,  the 
whole  ideal  system  of  qualities  and  relations 
which  the  world  has  exemplified  or  will 
exemplify.  The  truth  is  all  things  seen  under 
the  form  of  eternity.  In  this  sense,  a  psy- 
chological criticism  cannot  be  pertinent  to 
the  truth  at  all,  the  truth  not  being  anything 
psychological  or  human.  It  is  an  ideal  realm 
of  being  properly  enough  not  discussed  by 
psychologists  ;  yet  so  far  as  I  know  it  is 
denied  by  nobody,  not  even  by  Protagoras 
or  the  pragmatists.  If  Protagoras  said  that 
whatever  appears  to  any  man  at  any  moment 
is  true,  he  doubtless  meant  true  on  that 
subject,  true  of  that  appearance  :  because 
for  a  sensualist  objects  do  not  extend  beyond 
what  he  sees  of  them,  so  that  each  of  his 


154     CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

perceptions  defines  its  whole  object  and  is 
infallible.  But  in  that  case  the  truth  about 
the  universe  is  evidently  that  it  is  composed 
of  these  various  sensations,  each  carrying  an 
opinion  impossible  for  it  to  abandon  or  to 
revise,  since  to  revise  the  opinion  would 
simply  be  to  bring  a  fresh  object  into  view. 
The  truth  would  further  be  that  these  sensa- 
tions and  opinions  stand  to  one  another  in 
certain  definite  relations  of  diversity,  succes- 
sion, duration,  et  ccetera,  whether  any  of 
them  happens  to  assert  these  relations  or 
not.  In  the  same  way,  I  cannot  find  that 
our  contemporary  pragmatists,  in  giving 
their  account  of  what  truth  is  (in  a  different 
and  quite  abstract  sense  of  the  word  truth), 
have  ever  doubted,  or  so  much  as  noticed, 
what  in  all  their  thinking  they  evidently 
assume  to  be  the  actual  and  concrete  truth  : 
namely,  that  there  are  many  states  of  mind, 
many  labouring  opinions  more  or  less  useful 
and  good,  which  actually  lead  to  others,  more 
or  less  expected  and  satisfactory.  Surely 
every  pragmatist,  like  every  thinking  man, 
always  assumes  the  reality  of  an  actual  truth, 
comprehensive  and  largely  undiscovered,  of 
which  he  claims  to  be  reporting  a  portion. 


LATER  SPECULATIONS  155 

What  he  rather  confusingly  calls  truth,  and 
wishes  to  reduce  to  a  pragmatic  function,  is 
not  this  underlying  truth,  the  sum  of  all  true 
propositions,  but  merely  the  abstract  quality 
which  all  true  propositions  must  have  in 
common,  to  be  called  true.  By  truth  he 
means  only  correctness.  The  possibility  of 
correctness  in  an  idea  is  a  great  puzzle  to 
him,  on  account  of  his  idealism,  which 
identifies  ideas  with  their  objects  ;  and  he 
asks  himself  how  an  idea  can  ever  come  to 
be  correct  or  incorrect,  as  if  it  referred  to 
something  beyond  itself. 

The  fact  is,  of  course,  that  an  idea  can 
be  correct  or  incorrect  only  if  by  the  word 
idea  we  mean  not  a  datum  but  an  opinion  ; 
and  the  abstract  relation  of  correctness,  by 
virtue  of  which  any  opinion  is  true,  is  easily 
stated.  An  opinion  is  true  if  what  it  is 
talking  about  is  constituted  as  the  opinion 
asserts  it  to  be  constituted.  To  test  this 
correctness  may  be  difficult  or  even  impossible 
in  particular  cases  ;  in  the  end  we  may  be 
reduced  to  believing  on  instinct  that  our 
fundamental  opinions  are  true  ;  for  instance, 
that  we  are  living  through  time,  and  that 
the  past  and  future  are  not,  as  a  consistent 


156     CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

idealism  would  assert,  mere  notions  in  the 
present.  But  what  renders  such  instinctive 
opinions  true,  if  they  are  true,  is  the  fact 
affirmed  being  as  it  is  affirmed  to  be.  It  is 
not  a  question  of  similarity  or  derivation 
between  a  passive  datum  and  a  hidden 
object ;  it  is  a  question  of  identity  between 
the  fact  asserted  and  the  fact  existing.  If 
an  opinion  could  not  freely  leap  to  its  object, 
no  matter  how  distant  or  hypothetical,  and 
assert  something  of  that  chosen  object,  an 
opinion  could  not  be  so  much  as  wrong ; 
for  it  would  not  be  an  opinion  about 
anything. 

Psychologists,  however,  are  not  concerned 
with  what  an  opinion  asserts  logically,  but 
only  with  what  it  is  existentially ;  they  are 
asking  what  existential  relations  surround 
an  idea  when  it  is  called  true  which  are  absent 
when  it  is  called  false.  Their  problem  is 
frankly  insoluble  ;  for  it  requires  us  to  dis- 
cover what  makes  up  the  indicative  force 
of  an  idea  which  by  hypothesis  is  a  passive 
datum  ;  as  if  a  grammarian  should  inquire 
how  a  noun  in  the  accusative  case  could  be 
a  verb  in  the  indicative  mood. 

It    was    not    idly    that    William    James 


LATER  SPECULATIONS  157 

dedicated  his  book  on  Pragmatism  to  the 
memory  of  John  Stuart  Mill.  The  principle 
of  psychological  empiricism  is  to  look  for 
the  elements  employed  in  thinking,  and  to 
conclude  that  thought  is  nothing  but  those 
elements  arranged  in  a  certain  order.  It  is 
true  that  since  the  days  of  Mill  analysis  has 
somewhat  extended  the  inventory  of  these 
elements,  so  as  to  include  among  simples, 
besides  the  data  of  the  five  senses,  such  things 
as  feelings  of  relation,  sensations  of  move- 
ment, vague  ill-focused  images,  and  perhaps 
even  telepathic  and  instinctive  intuitions. 
But  some  series  or  group  of  these  immediate 
data,  kept  in  their  crude  immediacy,  must 
according  to  this  method  furnish  the  whole 
answer  to  our  question  :  the  supposed  power 
of  an  idea  to  have  an  object  beyond  itself, 
or  to  be  true  of  any  other  fact,  must  be 
merely  a  name  for  a  certain  position  which 
the  given  element  occupies  in  relation  to 
other  elements  in  the  routine  of  experience. 
Knowledge  and  truth  must  be  forms  of  con- 
tiguity and  succession. 

We  must  not  be  surprised,  under  these 
circumstances,  if  the  problem  is  shifted,  and 
another  somewhat  akin  to  it  takes  its  place, 


158     CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

with  which  the  chosen  method  can  really 
cope.  This  subterfuge  is  not  voluntary  ;  it 
is  an  instinctive  effect  of  fidelity  to  a  point 
of  view  which  has  its  special  validity,  though 
naturally  not  applicable  in  every  sphere.  We 
do  not  observe  that  politicians  abandon 
their  party  when  it  happens  to  have  brought 
trouble  upon  the  country  ;  their  destiny  as 
politicians  is  precisely  to  make  effective  all 
the  consequences,  good  or  evil,  which  their 
party  policy  may  involve.  So  it  would  be 
too  much  to  expect  a  school  of  philosophers 
to  abandon  their  method  because  there  are 
problems  it  cannot  solve  ;  their  business  is 
rather  to  apply  their  method  to  everything 
to  which  it  can  possibly  be  applied  ;  and 
when  they  have  reached  that  limit,  the  very 
most  we  can  ask,  if  they  are  superhumanly 
modest  and  wise,  is  that  they  should 
make  way  gracefully  for  another  school  of 
philosophers. 

Now  there  is  a  problem,  not  impossible 
to  confuse  with  the  problem  of  correctness 
in  ideas,  with  which  psychological  criticism 
can  really  deal ;  it  is  the  question  of  the 
relation  between  a  sign  and  the  thing  signified. 
Of  this  relation  a  genuinely  empirical  account 


LATER  SPECULATIONS  159 

can  be  given ;  both  terms  are  objects  of 
experience,  present  or  eventual,  and  the 
passage  between  them  is  made  in  time  by  an 
experienced  transition.  Nor  need  the  signs 
which  lead  to  a  particular  object  be  always 
the  same,  or  of  one  sort ;  an  object  may 
be  designated  and  announced  unequivocally 
by  a  verbal  description,  without  any  direct 
image,  or  by  images  now  of  one  sense  and 
now  of  another,  or  by  some  external  relation, 
such  as  its  place,  or  by  its  proper  name,  if 
it  possesses  one  ;  and  these  designations  all 
convey  knowledge  of  it  and  may  be  true 
signs,  if  in  yielding  to  their  suggestion  we 
are  brought  eventually  to  the  object  meant. 
Here,  if  I  am  not  mistaken,  is  the  genuine 
application  of  what  the  pragmatists  call  their 
theory  of  truth.  It  concerns  merely  what 
links  a  sign  to  the  thing  signified,  and  renders 
it  a  practical  substitute  for  the  same.  But 
this  empirical  analysis  of  signification  has 
been  entangled  with  more  or  less  hazardous 
views  about  truth,  such  as  that  an  idea  is 
true  so  long  as  it  is  believed  to  be  true,  or 
that  it  is  true  if  it  is  good  and  useful,  or  that 
it  is  not  true  until  it  is  verified.  This  last 
suggestion  shows  what  strange  reversals  a 


160     CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

wayward  personal  philosophy  may  be  sub- 
ject to.  Empiricism  used  to  mean  reliance 
on  the  past ;  now  apparently  all  empirical 
truth  regards  only  the  future,  since  truth  is 
said  to  arise  by  the  verification  of  some 
presumption.  Presumptions  about  the  past 
can  evidently  never  be  verified  ;  at  best  they 
may  be  corroborated  by  fresh  presumptions 
about  the  past,  equally  dependent  for  their 
truth  on  a  verification  which  in  the  nature 
of  the  case  is  impossible.  At  this  point  the 
truly  courageous  empiricist  will  perhaps  say 
that  the  real  past  only  means  the  ideas  of 
the  past  which  we  shall  form  in  the  future. 
Consistency  is  a  jewel ;  and,  as  in  the  case  of 
other  jewels,  we  may  marvel  at  the  price 
that  some  people  will  pay  for  it.  In  any 
case,  we  are  led  to  this  curious  result :  that 
radical  empiricism  ought  to  deny  that  any 
idea  of  the  past  can  be  true  at  all. 

Such  dissolving  views,  really  somewhat 
like  those  attributed  to  Protagoras,  do  not 
rest  on  sober  psychological  analysis  :  they 
express  rather  a  certain  impatience  and  a 
certain  despairing  democracy  in  the  field  of 
opinion.  Great  are  the  joys  of  haste  and  of 
radicalism,    and    young    philosophers    must 


LATER  SPECULATIONS  161 

not  be  deprived  of  them.  We  may  the 
more  justly  pass  over  these  small  scandals 
of  pragmatism  in  that  William  James  and 
his  American  disciples  have  hardly  cared  to 
defend  them,  but  have  turned  decidedly  in 
the  direction  of  a  universal  objectivism. 

The  spirit  of  these  radical  views  is  not  at 
all  negative  :  it  is  hopeful,  revolutionary, 
inspired  entirely  by  love  of  certitude  and 
clearness.  It  is  very  sympathetic  to  science, 
in  so  far  as  science  is  a  personal  pursuit  and 
a  personal  experience,  rather  than  a  body 
of  doctrine  with  moral  implications.  It  is 
very  close  to  nature,  as  the  lover  of  nature 
understands  the  word.  If  it  denies  the 
existence  of  the  cognitive  energy  and  the 
colouring  medium  of  mind,  it  does  so  only 
in  a  formal  sense  ;  all  the  colours  with  which 
that  medium  endows  the  world  remain 
painted  upon  it ;  and  all  the  perspectives 
and  ideal  objects  of  thought  are  woven  into 
the  texture  of  things.  Not,  I  think,  intelli- 
gibly or  in  a  coherent  fashion  ;  for  this  new 
realism  is  still  immature,  and  if  it  is  ever 
rendered  adequate  it  will  doubtless  seem 
much  less  original?  My  point  is  that  in  its 
denial  of  mind  it  has  no  bias  against  things 

M 


162     CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

intellectual,  and  if  it  refuses  to  admit  ideas 
or  even  sensations,  it  does  not  blink  the 
sensible  or  ideal  objects  which  ideas  and 
sensations  reveal,  but  rather  tries  to  find  a 
new  and  (as  it  perhaps  thinks)  a  more  honour- 
able place  for  them  ;  they  are  not  regarded 
as  spiritual  radiations  from  the  natural  world, 
but  as  parts  of  its  substance. 

This  may  have  the  ring  of  materialism  ; 
but  the  temper  and  faith  of  these  schools 
are  not  materialistic.  Systematic  material- 
ism is  one  of  the  philosophies  of  old  age.  It 
is  a  conviction  that  may  overtake  a  few 
shrewd  and  speculative  cynics,  who  have  long 
observed  their  own  irrationality  and  that 
of  the  world,  and  have  divined  its  cause  ; 
by  such  men  materialism  may  be  embraced 
without  reserve,  in  all  its  rigour  and  pun- 
gency. But  the  materialism  of  youth  is  part 
of  a  simple  faith  in  sense  and  in  science  ;  it 
is  not  exclusive  ;  it  admits  the  co-operation 
of  any  other  forces — divine,  magical,  formal, 
or  vital — if  appearances  anywhere  seem  to 
manifest  them.  The  more  we  interpret  the 
ambiguities  or  crudities  of  American  writers 
in  this  sense,  the  less  we  shall  misunderstand 
them. 


LATER  SPECULATIONS  163 

It  seems,  then,  that  the  atmosphere  of  the 
new  world  has  already  affected  philosophy 
in  two  ways.  In  the  first  place,  it  has  accel- 
erated and  rendered  fearless  the  disintegration 
of  conventional  categories  ;  a  disintegration 
on  which  modern  philosophy  has  always 
been  at  work,  and  which  has  precipitated  its 
successive  phases.  In  the  second  place,  the 
younger  cosmopolitan  America  has  favoured 
the  impartial  assemblage  and  mutual  con- 
frontation of  all  sorts  of  ideas.  It  has  pro- 
duced, in  intellectual  matters,  a  sort  of 
happy  watchfulness  and  insecurity.  Never 
was  the  human  mind  master  of  so  many  facts 
and  sure  of  so  few  principles.  Will  this 
suspense  and  fluidity  of  thought  crystallise 
into  some  great  new  system  ?  Positive  gifts 
of  imagination  and  moral  heroism  are  re- 
quisite to  make  a  great  philosopher,  gifts 
which  must  come  from  the  gods  and  not 
from  circumstances.  But  if  the  genius  should 
arise,  this  vast  collection  of  suggestions  and 
this  radical  analysis  of  presumptions  which 
he  will  find  in  America  may  keep  him  from 
going  astray.  Nietzsche  said  that  the  earth 
has  been  a  mad-Tiouse  long  enough.  Without 
contradicting  him  we  might  perhaps  soften 


164     CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

the  expression,  and  say  that  philosophy  has 
been  long  enough  an  asylum  for  enthusiasts. 
It  is  time  for  it  to  become  less  solemn  and 
more  serious.  We  may  be  frightened  at 
first  to  learn  on  what  thin  ice  we  have  been 
skating,  in  speculation  as  in  government ; 
but  we  shall  not  be  in  a  worse  plight  for 
knowing  it,  only  wiser  to-day  and  perhaps 
safer  to-morrow. 


CHAPTER    VI 

MATERIALISM  AND   IDEALISM  IN 
AMERICAN  LIFE 

The  language  and  traditions  common  to 
England  and  America  are  like  other  family 
bonds  :  they  draw  kindred  together  at  the 
greater  crises  in  life,  but  they  also  occasion 
at  times  a  little  friction  and  fault-finding. 
The  groundwork  of  the  two  societies  is  so 
similar,  that  each  nation,  feeling  almost  at 
home  with  the  other,  and  almost  able  to 
understand  its  speech,  may  instinctively 
resent  what  hinders  it  from  feeling  at  home 
altogether.  Differences  will  tend  to  seem 
anomalies  that  have  slipped  in  by  mistake 
and  through  somebody's  fault.  Each  will 
judge  the  other  by  his  own  standards,  not 
feeling,  as  in  the  presence  of  complete 
foreigners,  that  he  must  make  an  effort  of 
imagination  and  put  himself  in  another 
man's  shoes. 

165 


166     CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

In  matters  of  morals,  manners,  and  art, 
the  danger  of  comparisons  is  not  merely 
that  they  may  prove  invidious,  by  ranging 
qualities  in  an  order  of  merit  which  might 
wound  somebody's  vanity ;  the  danger  is 
rather  that  comparisons  may  distort  com- 
prehension, because  in  truth  good  qualities 
are  all  different  in  kind,  and  free  lives  are 
different  in  spirit.  Comparison  is  the  ex- 
pedient of  those  who  cannot  reach  the  heart 
of  the  things  compared  ;  and  no  philosophy 
is  more  external  and  egotistical  than  that 
which  places  the  essence  of  a  thing  in  its 
relation  to  something  else.  In  reality,  at 
the  centre  of  every  natural  being  there  is 
something  individual  and  incommensurable, 
a  seed  with  its  native  impulses  and  aspira- 
tions, shaping  themselves  as  best  they  can 
in  their  given  environment.  Variation  is 
a  consequence  of  freedom,  and  the  slight 
but  radical  diversity  of  souls  in  turn  makes 
freedom  requisite.  Instead  of  instituting  in 
his  mini  any  comparisons  between  the 
United  States  and  other  nations,  I  would 
accordingly  urge  the  reader  to  forget  himself 
and,  in  so  far  as  such  a  thing  may  be  possible 
for  him  or  for  me,  to  transport  himself  ideally 


MATERIALISM  AND  IDEALISM   167 

with  me  into  the  outer  circumstances  of 
American  Ufe,  the  better  to  feel  its  inner 
temper,  and  to  see  how  inevitably  the 
American  shapes  his  feelings  and  judgements, 
honestly  reporting  all  things  as  they  appear 
from  his  new  and  unobstructed  station. 

I  speak  of  the  American  in  the  singular, 
as  if  there  were  not  millions  of  them,  north 
and  south,  east  and  west,  of  both  sexes,  of 
all  ages,  and  of  various  races,  professions, 
and  religions.  Of  course  the  one  American  I 
speak  of  is  mythical ;  but  to  speak  in  parables 
is  inevitable  in  such  a  subject,  and  it  is 
perhaps  as  well  to  do  so  frankly.  There  is 
a  sort  of  poetic  ineptitude  in  all  human  dis- 
course when  it  tries  to  deal  with  natural  and 
existing  things.  Practical  men  may  not 
notice  it,  but  in  fact  human  discourse  is 
intrinsically  addressed  not  to  natural  existing 
things  but  to  ideal  essences,  poetic  or  logical 
terms  which  thought  may  define  and  pjay 
with.  When  fortune  or  necessity  diverts  our 
attention  from  this  congenial  ideal  sport  to 
crude  facts  and  pressing  issues,  we  turn  our 
frail  poetic  ideas  into  symbols  for  those 
terrible  irruptive  things.  In  that  paper 
money  of  our  own  stamping,  the  legal  tender 


168     CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

of  the  mind,  we  are  obliged  to  reckon  all  the 
movements  and  values  of  the  world.  The 
universal  American  I  speak  of  is  one  of  these 
symbols  ;  and  I  should  be  still  speaking  in 
symbols  and  creating  moral  units  and  a  false 
simplicity,  if  I  spoke  of  classes  pedantically 
subdivided,  or  individuals  ideally  integrated 
and  defined.  As  it  happens,  the  symbolic 
American  can  be  made  largely  adequate  to 
the  facts ;  because,  if  there  are  immense 
differences  between  individual  Americans — 
for  some  Americans  are  black — yet  there  is 
a  great  uniformity  in  their  environment, 
customs,  temper,  and  thoughts.  They  have 
all  been  uprooted  from  their  several  soils  and 
ancestries  and  plunged  together  into  one 
vortex,  whirling  irresistibly  in  a  space  other- 
wise quite  empty.  To  be  an  American  is  of 
itself  almost  a  moral  condition,  an  education, 
and  a  career.  Hence  a  single  ideal  figment 
can  cover  a  large  part  of  what  each  American 
is  in  his  character,  and  almost  the  whole  of 
what  most  Americans  are  in  their  social 
outlook  and  political  judgements. 

The  discovery  of  the  new  world  exercised 
a  sort  of  selection  among  the  inhabitants  of 
Europe.    All  the  colonists,  except  the  negroes, 


MATERIALISM  AND  IDEALISM    169 

were  voluntary  exiles.  The  fortunate,  the 
deeply  rooted,  and  the  lazy  remained  at 
home  ;  the  wilder  instincts  or  dissatisfaction 
of  others  tempted  them  beyond  the  horizon. 
The  American  is  accordingly  the  most  ad- 
venturous, or  the  descendant  of  the  most 
adventurous,  of  Europeans.  It  is  in  his 
blood  to  be  socially  a  radical,  though  perhaps 
not  intellectually.  What  has  existed  in  the 
past,  especially  in  the  remote  past,  seems  to 
him  not  only  not  authoritative,  but  irrele- 
vant, inferior,  and  outworn.  He  finds  it 
rather  a  sorry  waste  of  time  to  think  about 
the  past  at  all.  But  his  enthusiasm  for  the 
future  is  profound ;  he  can  conceive  of  no 
more  decisive  way  of  recommending  an 
opinion  or  a  practice  than  to  say  that  it  is 
what  everybody  is  coming  to  adopt.  This 
expectation  of  what  he  approves,  or  approval 
of  what  he  expects,  makes  up  his  optimism. 
It  is  the  necessary  faith  of  the  pioneer. 

Such  a  temperament  is,  of  course,  not 
maintained  in  the  nation  merely  by  inherit- 
ance. Inheritance  notoriously  tends  to 
restore  the  average  of  a  race,  and  plays 
incidentally  many  a  trick  of  atavism.  What 
maintains  this  temperament  and  makes  it 


170      CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

national  is  social  contagion  or  pressure — 
something  immensely  strong  in  democracies. 
The  luckless  American  who  is  born  a  con- 
servative, or  who  is  drawn  to  poetic  subtlety, 
pious  retreats,  or  gay  passions,  nevertheless 
has  the  categorical  excellence  of  work,  growth, 
enterprise,  reform,  and  prosperity  dinned 
into  his  ears  :  every  door  is  open  in  this 
direction  and  shut  in  the  other ;  so  that  he 
either  folds  up  his  heart  and  withers  in  a 
corner — in  remote  places  you  sometimes  find 
such  a  solitary  gaunt  idealist — or  els€  he  flies 
to  Oxford  or  Florence  or  Montmartre  to  save 
his  soul — or  perhaps  not  to  save  it. 

The  optimism  of  the  pioneer  is  not  limited 
to  his  view  of  himself  and  his  own  future  : 
it  starts  from  that ;  but  feeling  assured, 
safe,  and  cheery  within,  he  looks  with  smil- 
ing and  most  kindly  eyes  on  everything 
and  everybody  about  him.  Individualism, 
roughness,  and  self-trust  are  supposed  to  go 
with  selfishness  and  a  cold  heart ;  but  I 
suspect  that  is  a  prejudice.  It  is  rather 
dependence,  insecurity,  and  mutual  jostling 
that  poison  our  placid  gregarious  brother- 
hood ;  and  fanciful  passionate  demands 
upon  people's  affections,  when  they  are  dis- 


MATERIALISM  AND  IDEALISM   171 

appointed,  as  they  soon  must  be,  breed  ill- 
will  and  a  final  meanness.  The  milk  of 
human  kindness  is  less  apt  to  turn  sour  if 
the  vessel  that  holds  it  stands  steady,  cool, 
and  separate,  and  is  not  too  often  uncorked. 
In  his  affections  the  American  is  seldom 
passionate,  often  deep,  and  always  kindly. 
If  it  were  given  me  to  look  into  the  depths 
of  a  man's  heart,  and  I  did  not  find  goodwill 
at  the  bottom,  I  should  say  without*  any 
hesitation.  You  are  not  an  American.  But 
as  the  American  is  an  individualist  his  good- 
will is  not  officious.  His  instinct  is  to  think 
well  of  everybody,  and  to  wish  everybody 
well,  but  in  a  spirit  of  rough  comradeship, 
expecting  every  man  to  stand  on  his  own 
legs  and  to  be  helpful  in  his  turn.  When  he 
has  given  his  neighbour  a  chance  he  thinks 
he  has  done  enough  for  him  ;  but  he  feels  it 
is  an  absolute  duty  to  do  that.  It  will  take 
some  hammering  to  drive  a  coddling  socialism 
into  America. 

As  self-trust  may  pass  into  self-sufficiency, 
so  optimism,  kindness,  and  goodwill  may 
grow  into  a  habit  of  doting  on  everything. 
To  the  good  American  many  subjects  are 
sacred  :    sex  is  sacred,   women  are  sacred. 


172     CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

children  are  sacred,  business  is  sacred, 
America  is  sacred.  Masonic  lodges  and  college 
clubs  are  sacred.  This  feeling  grows  out  of 
the  good  opinion  he  wishes  to  have  of  these 
things,  and  serves  to  maintain  it.  If  he  did 
not  regard  all  these  things  as  sacred  he  might 
come  to  doubt  sometimes  if  they  were  wholly 
good.  Of  this  kind,  too,  is  the  idealism  of 
single  ladies  in  reduced  circumstances  who 
can  see  the  soul  of  beauty  in  ugly  things,  and 
are  perfectly  happy  because  their  old  dog  has 
such  pathetic  eyes,  their  minister  is  so 
eloquent,  their  garden  with  its  three  sun- 
flowers is  so  pleasant,  their  dead  friends  were 
sp  devoted,  and  their  distant  relations  are 
so  rich. 

Consider  now  the  great  emptiness  of 
America :  not  merely  the  primitive  physical 
emptiness,  surviving  in  some  regions,  and 
the  continental  spacing  of  the  chief  natural 
features,  but  also  the  moral  emptiness  of  a 
settlement  where  men  and  even  houses  are 
easily  moved  about,  and  no  one,  almost,  lives 
where  he  was  born  or  believes  what  he  has 
been  taught.  Not  that  the  American  has 
jettisoned  these  impedimenta  in  anger;  they 
have  simply  slipped  from  him  as  he  moves. 


MATERIALISM  AND  IDEALISM    173 

Great  empty  spaces  bring  a  sort  of  freedom 
to  both  soul  and  body.  You  may  pitch 
your  tent  where  you  will ;  or  if  ever  you 
decide  to  build  anything,  it  can  be  in  a  style 
of  your  own  devising.  You  have  room, 
fresh  materials,  few  models,  and  no  critics. 
You  trust  your  own  experience,  not  only 
because  you  must,  but  because  you  find  you 
may  do  so  safely  and  prosperously ;  the 
forces  that  determine  fortune  are  not  yet 
too  complicated  for  one  man  to  explore. 
Your  detachable  condition  makes  you  lavish 
with  money  and  cheerfully  experimental ; 
you  lose  little  if  you  lose  all,  since  you  remain 
completely  yourself.  At  the  same  time  your 
absolute  initiative  gives  you  practice  in 
coping  with  novel  situations,  and  in  being 
original ;  it  teaches  you  shrewd  management. 
Your  life  and  mind  will  become  dry  and 
direct,  with  few  decorative  flourishes.  In 
your  works  everything  will  be  stark  and 
pragmatic  ;  you  will  not  understand  why 
anybody  should  make  those  little  sacrifices 
to  instinct  or  custom  which  we  call  grace. 
The  fine  arts  will  seem  to  you  academic 
luxuries,  fit  to  amuse  the  ladies,  like  Greek 
and  Sanskrit ;    for  while  you  will  perfectly 


174     CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

appreciate  generosity  in  men's  purposes,  you 
will  not  admit  that  the  execution  of  these 
purposes  can  be  anything  but  business.  Un- 
fortunately the  essence  of  the  fine  arts  is  that 
the  execution  should  be  generous  too,  and 
delightful  in  itself;  therefore  the  fine  arts 
will  suffer,  not  so  much  in  their  express  pro- 
fessional pursuit — for  then  they  become 
practical  tasks  and  a  kind  of  business — as  in 
that  diffused  charm  which  qualifies  all  human 
action  when  men  are  artists  by  nature. 
Elaboration,  which  is  something  to  accom- 
plish, will  be  preferred  to  simplicity,  which 
is  something  to  rest  in  ;  manners  will  suffer 
somewhat ;  speech  will  suffer  horribly.  For 
the  American  the  urgency  of  his  novel  attack 
upon  matter,  his  zeal  in  gathering  its  fruits, 
precludes  meanderings  in  primrose  paths ; 
devices  must  be  short  cuts,  and  symbols 
must  be  mere  symbols.  If  his  wife  wants 
luxuries,  of  course  she  may  have  them ;  and 
if  he  has  vices,  that  can  be  provided  for  too  ; 
but  they  must  all  be  set  down  under  those 
headings  in  his  ledgers. 

At  the  same  time,  the  American  is 
imaginative ;  for  where  life  is  intense, 
imagination  is  intense  also.     Were  he  not 


MATERIALISM  AND  IDEALISM    175 

imaginative  he  would  not  live  so  much  in 
the  future.  But  his  imagination  is  practical, 
and  the  future  it  forecasts  is  immediate  ;  it 
works  with  the  clearest  and  least  ambiguous 
terms  known  to  his  experience,  in  terms  of 
number,  measure,  contrivance,  economy,  and 
speed.  He  is  an  idealist  working  on  matter. 
Understanding  as  he  does  the  material  poten- 
tialities of  things,  he  is  successful  in  invention, 
conservative  in  reform,  and  quick  in  emergen- 
cies. All  his  life  he  jumps  into  the  train 
after  it  has  started  and  jumps  out  before  it 
has  stopped  ;  and  he  never  once  gets  left 
behind,  or  breaks  a  leg.  There  is  an  enthusi- 
asm in  his  sympathetic  handling  of  material 
forces  which  goes  far  to  cancel  the  illiberal 
character  which  it  might  otherwise  assume. 
The  good  workman  hardly  distinguishes  his 
artistic  intention  from  the  potency  in  himself 
and  in  things  which  is  about  to  realise  that 
intention.  Accordingly  his  ideals  fall  into 
the  form  of  premonitions  and  prophecies  ; 
and  his  studious  prophecies  often  come  true. 
So  do  the  happy  workmanlike  ideals  of  the 
American.  When  a  poor  boy,  perhaps,  he 
dreams  of  an  education,  and  presently  he 
gets  an  education,  or  at  least  a  degree ;    he 


176      CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

dreams  of  growing  rich,  and  he  grows  rich — 
only  more  slowly  and  modestly,  perhaps, 
than  he  expected  ;  he  dreams  of  marrying 
his  Rebecca  and,  even  if  he  marries  a  Leah 
instead,  he  ultimately  finds  in  Leah  his 
Rebecca  after  all.  He  dreams  of  helping 
to  carry  on  and  to  accelerate  the  movement 
of  a  vast,  seething,  progressive  society,  and 
he  actually  does  so.  Ideals  clinging  so  close 
to  nature  are  almost  sure  of  fulfilment ;  the 
American  beams  with  a  certain  self-con- 
fidence and  sense  of  mastery ;  he  feels  that 
God  and  nature  are  working  with  him. 

Idealism  in  the  American  accordingly 
goes  hand  in  hand  with  present  contentment 
and  with  foresight  of  what  the  future  very 
likely  will  actually  bring.  He  is  not  a 
revolutionist ;  he  believes  he  is  already  on 
the  right  track  and  moving  towards  an 
excellent  destiny.  In  revolutionists,  on  the 
contrary,  idealism  is  founded  on  dissatisfac- 
tion and  expresses  it.  What  exists  seems 
to  them  an  absurd  jumble  of  irrational 
accidents  and  bad  habits,  and  they  want  the 
future  to  be  based  on  reason  and  to  be  the 
pellucid  embodiment  of  all  their  maxims. 
All  their  zeal  is  for  something  radically  dif- 


MATERIALISM  AND  IDEALISM    177 

ferent  from  the  actual  and  (if  they  only  knew 
it)  from  the  possible  ;  it  is  ideally  simple, 
and  they  love  it  and  believe  in  it  because 
their  nature  craves  it.  They  think  life  would 
be  set  free  by  the  destruction  of  all  its  organs. 
They  are  therefore  extreme  idealists  in  the 
region  of  hope,  but  not  at  all,  as  poets  and 
artists  are,  in  the  region  of  perception  and 
memory.  In  the  atmosphere  of  civilised 
life  they  miss  all  the  refraction  and  all  the 
fragrance  ;  so  that  in  their  conception  of 
actual  things  they  are  apt  to  be  crude 
realists;  and  their  ignorance  and  inexperi- 
ence of  the  moral  world,  unless  it  comes  of 
ill-luck,  indicates  their  incapacity  for  educa- 
tion. Now  incapacity  for  education,  when 
united  with  great  inner  vitality,  is  one  root 
of  idealism.  It  is  what  condemns  us  all, 
in  the  region  of  sense,  to  substitute  perpetu- 
ally what  we  are  capable  of  imagining  for 
what  things  may  be  in  themselves  ;  it  is 
what  condemns  us,  wherever  it  extends,  to 
think  a  'priori ;  it  is  what  keeps  us  bravely 
and  incorrigibly  pursuing  what  we  call  the 
good — that  is,  what  would  fulfil  the  demands 
of  our  nature — however  little  provision  the 
fates  may  have  made  for  it.     But  the  want 

N 


178     CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

of  insight  on  the  part  of  revolutionists 
touching  the  past  and  the  present  infects 
in  an  important  particular  their  idealism 
about  the  future  ;  it  renders  their  dreams 
of  the  future  unrealisable.  For  in  human 
beings — this  may  not  be  true  of  other 
animals,  more  perfectly  preformed — experi- 
ence is  necessary  to  pertinent  and  concrete 
thinking ;  even  our  primitive  instincts  are 
blind  until  they  stumble  upon  some  occasion 
that  solicits  them  ;  and  they  can  be  much 
transformed  or  deranged  by  their  first  partial 
satisfactions.  Therefore  a  man  who  does 
not  idealise  his  experience,  but  idealises  a 
priori,  is  incapable  of  true  prophecy  ;  when 
he  dreams  he  raves,  and  the  more  he  criticises 
the  less  he  helps.  American  idealism,  on 
the  contrary,  is  nothing  if  not  helpful, 
nothing  if  not  pertinent  to  practicable  trans- 
formations ;  and  when  the  American  frets, 
it  is  because  whatever  is  useless  and  imperti- 
nent, be  it  idealism  or  inertia,  irritates  him  ; 
for  it  frustrates  the  good  results  which  he 
sees  might  so  easily  have  been  obtained. 

The  American  is  wonderfully  alive  ;  and 
his  vitality,  not  having  often  found  a  suit- 
able outlet,  makes  him  appear  agitated  on 


MATERIALISM  AND  IDEALISM    179 

the  surface ;  he  is  always  letting  off  an 
unnecessarily  loud  blast  of  incidental  steam. 
Yet  his  vitality  is  not  superficial ;  it  is 
inwardly  prompted,  and  as  sensitive  and 
quick  as  a  magnetic  needle.  He  is  in- 
quisitive, and  ready  with  an  answer  to  any 
question  that  he  may  put  to  himself  of  his 
own  accord  ;  but  if  you  try  to  pour  instruc- 
tion into  him,  on  matters  that  do  not  touch 
his  own  spontaneous  life,  he  shows  the 
most  extraordinary  powers  of  resistance  and 
oblivescence  ;  so  that  he  often  is  remarkably 
expert  in  some  directions  and  surprisingly 
obtuse  in  others.  He  seems  to  bear  lightly 
the  sorrowful  burden  of  human  knowledge. 
In  a  word,  he  is  young. 

What  sense  is  there  in  this  feeling,  which 
we  all  have,  that  the  American  is  young  ? 
His  country  is  blessed  with  as  many  elderly 
people  as  any  other,  and  his  descent  from 
Adam,  or  from  the  Darwinian  rival  of  Adam, 
cannot  be  shorter  than  that  of  his  European 
cousins.  Nor  are  his  ideas  always  very 
fresh.  Trite  and  rigid  bits  of  morality  and 
religion,  with  much  seemly  and  antique 
political  lore,  remain  axiomatic  in  him,  as  in 
the  mind  of  a  child  ;    he  may  carry  all  this 


180     CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

about  with  an  unquestioning  familiarity 
which  does  not  comport  understanding.  To 
keep  traditional  sentiments  in  this  way 
insulated  and  uncriticised  is  itself  a  sign  of 
youth.  A  good  young  man  is  naturally 
conservative  and  loyal  on  all  those  subjects 
which  his  experience  has  not  brought  to  a 
test ;  advanced  opinions  on  politics,  mar- 
riage, or  literature  are  comparatively  rare 
in  America ;  they  are  left  for  the  ladies  to 
discuss,  and  usually  to  condemn,  while  the 
men  get  on  with  their  work.  In  spite  of 
what  is  old-fashioned  in  his  more  general 
ideas,  the  American  is  unmistakably  young ; 
and  this,  I  should  say,  for  two  reasons  :  one, 
that  he  is  chiefly  occupied  with  his  immediate 
environment,  and  the  other,  that  his  re- 
actions upon  it  are  inwardly  prompted, 
spontaneous,  and  full  of  vivacity  and  self- 
trust.  His  views  are  not  yet  lengthened ; 
his  will  is  not  yet  broken  or  transformed. 
The  present  moment,  however,  in  this,  as 
in  other  things,  may  mark  a  great  change  in 
him  ;  he  is  perhaps  now  reaching  his  majority, 
and  all  I  say  may  hardly  apply  to-day,  and 
may  not  apply  at  all  to-morrow.  I  speak 
of  him  as  I  have  known  him  ;   and  whatever 


MATERIALISM  AND  IDEALISM    181 

moral  strength  may  accrue  to  him  later,  I 
am  not  sorry  to  have  known  him  in  his 
youth.  The  charm  of  youth,  even  when  it 
is  a  little  boisterous,  lies  in  nearness  to  the 
impulses  of  nature,  in  a  quicker  and  more 
obvious  obedience  to  that  pure,  seminal 
principle  which,  having  formed  the  body 
and  its  organs,  always  directs  their  move- 
ments, unless  it  is  forced  by  vice  or  neces- 
sity to  make  them  crooked,  or  to  suspend 
them.  Even  under  the  inevitable  crust  of 
age  the  soul  remains  young,  and,  wherever 
it  is  able  to  break  through,  sprouts  into 
something  green  and  tender.  We  are  all  as 
young  at  heart  as  the  most  youthful  Ameri- 
can, but  the  seed  in  his  case  has  fallen  upon 
virgin  soil,  where  it  may  spring  up  more 
bravely  and  with  less  respect  for  the  giants 
of  the  wood.  Peoples  seem  older  when  their 
perennial  natural  youth  is  encumbered  with 
more  possessions  and  prepossessions,  and 
they  are  mindful  of  the  many  things  they 
have  lost  or  missed.  The  American  is  not 
mindful  of  them. 

In  America  there  is  a  tacit  optimistic  as- 
sumption about  existence,  to  the  effect  that 
the  more  existence  the  better.     The  soulless 


182     CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

critic  might  urge  that  quantity  is  only  a 
physical  category,  implying  no  excellence, 
but  at  best  an  abundance  of  opportunities 
both  for  good  and  for  evil.  Yet  the  young 
soul,  being  curious  and  hungry,  views  exist- 
ence a  priori  under  the  form  of  the  good  ; 
its  instinct  to  live  implies  a  faith  that  most 
things  it  can  become  or  see  or  do  will  be 
worth  while.  Respect  for  quantity  is  accord- 
ingly something  more  than  the  childish  joy 
and  wonder  at  bigness  ;  it  is  the  fisherman's 
joy  in  a  big  haul,  the  good  uses  of  which  he 
can  take  for  granted.  Such  optimism  is 
amiable.  Nature  cannot  afford  that  we 
should  begin  by  being  too  calculating  or 
wise,  and  she  encourages  us  by  the  pleasure 
she  attaches  to  our  functions  in  advance  of 
their  fruits,  and  often  in  excess  of  them  ; 
as  the  angler  enjoys  catching  his  fish  more 
than  eating  it,  and  often,  waiting  patiently 
for  the  fish  to  bite,  misses  his  own  supper. 
The  pioneer  must  devote  himself  to  prepara- 
tions ;  he  must  work  for  the  future,  and  it 
is  healthy  and  dutiful  of  him  to  love  his 
work  for  its  own  sake.  At  the  same  time, 
unless  reference  to  an  ultimate  purpose  is  at 
least  virtual  in  all  his  activities,  he  runs  the 


MATERIALISM  AND  IDEALISM   183 

danger  of  becoming  a  living  automaton, 
vain  and  ignominious  in  its  mechanical  con- 
stancy. Idealism  about  work  can  hide  an 
intense  materialism  about  life.  Man,  if  he 
is  a  rational  being,  cannot  live  by  bread 
alone  nor  be  a  labourer  merely ;  he  must 
eat  and  work  in  view  of  an  ideal  harmony 
which  overarches  all  his  days,  and  which  is 
realised  in  the  way  they  hang  together,  or  in 
some  ideal  issue  which  they  have  in  common. 
Otherwise,  though  his  technical  philosophy 
may  call  itself  idealism,  he  is  a  materialist  in 
morals ;  he  esteems  things,  and  esteems 
himself,  for  mechanical  uses  and  energies. 
Even  sensualists,  artists,  and  pleasure-lovers 
are  wiser  than  that,  for  though  their  idealism 
may  be  desultory  or  corrupt,  they  attain 
something  ideal,  and  prize  things  only  for 
their  living  effects,  moral  though  perhaps 
fugitive.  Sensation,  when  we  do  not  take 
it  as  a  signal  for  action,  but  arrest  and 
peruse  what  it  positively  brings  before  us, 
reveals  something  ideal — a  colour,  shape, 
or  sound  ;  and  to  dwell  on  these  presences, 
with  no  thought  of  their  material  significance, 
is  an  aesthetic,  or  dreamful  idealism.  To 
pass  from  this  idealism  to  the  knowledge 


184     CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

of  matter  is  a  great  intellectual  advance, 
and  goes  with  dominion  over  the  world  ;  for 
in  the  practical  arts  the  mind  is  adjusted  to 
a  larger  object,  with  more  depth  and  potenti- 
ality in  it ;  which  is  what  makes  people  feel 
that  the  material  world  is  real,  as  they  call 
it,  and  that  the  ideal  world  is  not.  Certainly 
the  material  world  is  real ;  for  the  philo- 
sophers who  deny  the  existence  of  matter 
are  like  the  critics  who  deny  the  existence 
of  Homer.  If  there  was  never  any  Homer, 
there  must  have  been  a  lot  of  other  poets  no 
less  Homeric  than  he  ;  and  if  matter  does 
not  exist,  a  combination  of  other  things 
exists  which  is  just  as  material.  But  the 
intense  reality  of  the  material  world  would 
not  prevent  it  from  being  a  dreary  waste  in 
our  eyes,  or  even  an  abyss  of  horror,  if  it 
brought  forth  no  spiritual  fruits.  In  fact, 
it  does  bring  forth  spiritual  fruits,  for  other- 
wise we  should  not  be  here  to  find  fault 
with  it,  and  to  set  up  our  ideals  over  against 
it.  Nature  is  material,  but  not  materialistic  ; 
it  issues  in  life,  and  breeds  all  sorts  of  warm 
passions  and  idle  beauties.  And  just  as 
sympathy  with  the  mechanical  travail  and 
turmoil  of  nature,   apart  from   its  spiritual 


MATERIALISM  AND  IDEALISM    185 

fruits,  is  moral  materialism,  so  the  continual 
perception  and  love  of  these  fruits  is  moral 
idealism — happiness  in  the  presence  of  im- 
material objects  and  harmonies,  such  as  we 
envisage  in  affection,  speculation,  religion, 
and  all  the  forms  of  the  beautiful. 

The    circumstances    of   his    life    hitherto 
have  necessarily  driven  the  American  into 
moral  materialism ;    for  in  his  dealings  with 
material  things  he  can  hardly  stop  to  enjoy 
their  sensible  aspects,  which  are  ideal,  nor 
proceed  at  once  to  their  ultimate  uses,  which 
are  ideal  too.     He  is  practical  as  against  the 
poet,  and  worldly  as  against  the  clear  philo- 
sopher   or    the    saint.     The    most    striking 
expression  of  this  materialism  is  usually  sup- 
posed to  be  his  love  of  the  almighty  dollar ; 
but  that  is  a  foreign  and  unintelligent  view. 
The  American  talks  about  money,  because 
that  is  the  symbol  and  measure  he  has  at 
hand  for  success,   intelligence,   and  power ; 
but    as    to    money    itself   he    makes,    loses, 
spends,  and  gives  it  away  with  a  very  light 
heart.     To  my  mind  the  most  striking  ex- 
pression of  his  materialism  is  his  singular 
preoccupation    With    quantity.     If,    for    in- 
stance,  you  visit  Niagara  Falls,   you  may 


186     CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

expect  to  hear  how  many  cubic  feet  or  metric 
tons  of  water  are  precipitated  per  second 
over  the  cataract ;  how  many  cities  and 
towns  (with  the  number  of  their  inhabitants) 
derive  hght  and  motive  power  from  it ;  and 
the  annual  value  of  the  further  industries 
that  might  very  well  be  carried  on  by  the 
same  means,  without  visibly  depleting  the 
world's  greatest  wonder  or  injuring  the 
tourist  trade.  That  is  what  I  confidently 
expected  to  hear  on  arriving  at  the  adjoining 
town  of  Buffalo ;  but  I  was  deceived.  The 
first  thing  I  heard  instead  was  that  there 
are  more  miles  of  asphalt  pavement  in  Buffalo 
than  in  any  city  in  the  world.  Nor  is  this 
insistence  on  quantity  confined  to  men  of 
business.  The  President  of  Harvard  College, 
seeing  me  once  by  chance  soon  after  the  be- 
ginning of  a  term,  inquired  how  my  classes 
were  getting  on  ;  and  when  I  replied  that 
I  thought  they  were  getting  on  well,  that 
my  men  seemed  to  be  keen  and  intelli- 
gent, he  stopped  me  as  if  I  was  about 
to  waste  his  time.  "  I  meant,"  said  he, 
"  what  is  the  number  of  students  in  your 
classes." 

Here  I  think  we  may  perceive  that  this 


MATERIALISM  AND  IDEALISM    187 

love  of  quantity  often  has  a  silent  partner, 
which  is  diffidence  as  to  quality.  The  demo- 
cratic conscience  recoils  before  anything  that 
savours  of  privilege ;  and  lest  it  should 
concede  an  unmerited  privilege  to  any  pur- 
suit or  person,  it  reduces  all  things  as  far 
as  possible  to  the  common  denominator  of 
quantity.  Numbers  cannot  lie  :  but  if  it 
came  to  comparing  the  ideal  beauties  of 
philosophy  with  those  of  Anglo-Saxon,  who 
should  decide  ?  All  studies  are  good — why 
else  have  universities  ? — but  those  must  be 
most  encouraged  which  attract  the  greatest 
number  of  students.  Hence  the  President's 
question.  Democratic  faith,  in  its  diffidence 
about  quality,  throws  the  reins  of  educa- 
tion upon  the  pupil's  neck,  as  Don  Quixote 
threw  the  reins  on  the  neck  of  Rocinante, 
and  bids  his  divine  instinct  choose  its  own 
way. 

The  American  has  never  yet  had  to  face 
the  trials  of  Job.  Great  crises,  like  the  Civil 
War,  he  has  known  how  to  surmount  victori- 
ously ;  and  now  that  he  has  surmounted  a 
second  great  crisis  victoriously,  it  is  possible 
that  he  may  relapse,  as  he  did  in  the  other 
case,  into  an  apparently  complete  absorption 


188     CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

in  material  enterprise  and  prosperity.     But 
if  serious  and  irremediable  tribulation  ever 
overtook  him,  what  would  his  attitude  be  ? 
It  is  then  that  we  should  be  able  to  discover 
whether  materialism  or  idealism  lies  at  the 
base  of  his  character.     Meantime  his  working 
mind  is  not  without  its  holiday.     He  spreads 
humour    pretty    thick    and    even    over    the 
surface  of  conversation,  and  humour  is  one 
form  of  moral  emancipation.     He  loves  land- 
scape, he  loves  mankind,  and  he  loves  know- 
ledge ;    and   in  music   at  least  he  finds  an 
art  which  he  unfeignedly  enjoys.     In  music 
and  landscape,  in  humour  and  kindness,  he 
touches  the  ideal  more  truly,  perhaps,  than 
in    his    ponderous    academic    idealisms    and 
busy  religions ;    for   it    is    astonishing  how 
much    even    religion    in    America    (can    it 
possibly  be  so  in  England  ?)  is  a  matter  of 
meetings,  building-funds,   schools,   charities, 
clubs,  and  picnics.     To  be  poor  in  order  to 
be  simple,  to  produce  less  in  order  that  the 
product  may  be  more  choice  and  beautiful, 
and  may  leave  us  less  burdened  with  un- 
necessary  duties   and   useless   possessions — 
that  is  an  ideal  not  articulate  in  the  American 
mind ;    yet  here  and  there  I  seem  to  have 


MATERIALISM  AND  IDEALISM    189 

heard  a  sigh  after  it,  a  groan  at  the  perpetual 
incubus  of  business  and  shrill  society.  Sig- 
nificant witness  to  such  aspirations  is  borne 
by  those  new  forms  of  popular  religion,  not 
mere  variations  on  tradition,  which  have 
sprung  up  from  the  soil — revivalism,  spiritual- 
ism, Christian  Science,  the  New  Thought. 
Whether  or  no  we  can  tap,  through  these  or 
other  channels,  some  cosmic  or  inner  energy 
not  hitherto  at  the  disposal  of  man  (and 
there  is  nothing  incredible  in  that),  we 
certainly  may  try  to  remove  friction  and 
waste  in  the  mere  process  of  living ;  we 
may  relax  morbid  strains,  loosen  suppressed 
instincts,  iron  out  the  creases  of  the  soul, 
discipline  ourselves  into  simplicity,  sweet- 
ness, and  peace.  These  religious  movements 
are  efforts  toward  such  physiological  economy 
and  hygiene  ;  and  while  they  are  thoroughly 
plebeian,  with  no  great  lights,  and  no  idea  of 
raising  men  from  the  most  vulgar  and  hum- 
drum worldly  existence,  yet  they  see  the 
possibility  of  physical  and  moral  health  on 
that  common  plane,  and  pursue  it.  That  is 
true  morality.  The  dignities  of  various  types 
of  life  or  mind,  like  the  gifts  of  various 
animals,  are  relative.     The  snob  adores  one 


190     CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

type  only,  and  the  creatures  supposed  by 
him  to  illustrate  it  perfectly ;  or  envies  and 
hates  them,  which  is  just  as  snobbish. 
Veritable  lovers  of  life,  on  the  contrary,  like 
Saint  Francis  or  like  Dickens,  know  that  in 
every  tenement  of  clay,  with  no  matter  what 
endowment  or  station,  happiness  and  per- 
fection are  possible  to  the  soul.  There  must 
be  no  brow-beating,  with  shouts  of  work  or 
progress  or  revolution,  any  more  than  with 
threats  of  hell-fire.  What  does  it  profit  a 
man  to  free  the  whole  world  if  his  soul  is  not 
free  ?  Moral  freedom  is  not  an  artificial 
condition,  because  the  ideal  is  the  mother 
tongue  of  both  the  heart  and  the  senses.  All 
that  is  requisite  is  that  we  should  pause  in 
living  to  enjoy  life,  and  should  lift  up  our 
hearts  to  things  that  are  pure  goods  in  them- 
selves, so  that  once  to  have  found  and  loved 
them,  whatever  else  may  betide,  may  remain 
a  happiness  that  nothing  can  sully.  This 
natural  idealism  does  not  imply  that  we  are 
immaterial,  but  only  that  we  are  animate  and 
truly  alive.  When  the  senses  are  sharp,  as 
they  are  in  the  American,  they  are  already 
half  liberated,  already  a  joy  in  themselves  ; 
and  when  the  heart  is  warm,  like  his,  and 


MATERIALISM  AND  IDEALISM    191 

eager  to  be  just,  its  ideal  destiny  can  hardly 
be  doubtful.  It  will  not  be  always  merely 
pumping  and  working ;  time  and  its  own 
pulses  will  lend  it  wings. 


CHAPTER  VII 

ENGLISH    LIBERTY   IN    AMERICA 

The  straits  of  Dover,  which  one  may  some- 
times see  across,  have  sufficed  so  to  isolate 
England  that  it  has  never  moved  quite  in 
step  with  the  rest  of  Europe  in  politics, 
morals,  or  art.  No  wonder  that  the  Atlantic 
Ocean,  although  it  has  favoured  a  mixed 
emigration  and  cheap  intercourse,  should 
have  cut  off  America  so  effectually  that  all 
the  people  there,  even  those  of  Latin  origin, 
have  become  curiously  different  from  any 
kind  of  European.  In  vain  are  they  reputed 
to  have  the  same  religions  or  to  speak  the 
same  languages  as  their  cousins  in  the  old 
world  ;  everything  has  changed  its  accent, 
spirit,  and  value.  Flora  and  fauna  have 
been  intoxicated  by  that  untouched  soil  and 
fresh  tonic  air,  and  by  those  vast  spaces  ;  in 
spite  of  their  hereditary  differences  of  species 

192 


ENGLISH  LIBERTY  IN  AMERICA  193 

they  have  all  acquired  the  same  crude  savour 
and  defiant  aspect.  In  comparison  with 
their  European  prototypes  they  seem  tough, 
meagre,  bold,  and  ugly.  In  the  United 
States,  apart  from  the  fact  that  most  of  the 
early  colonists  belonged  to  an  exceptional 
type  of  Englishman,  the  scale  and  speed 
of  life  have  made  everything  strangely 
un-English.  There  is  cheeriness  instead  of 
doggedness,  confidence  instead  of  circum- 
spection ;  there  is  a  desire  to  quizz  and  to 
dazzle  rather  than  a  fear  of  being  mistaken 
or  of  being  shocked  ;  there  is  a  pervasive 
cordiality,  exaggeration,  and  farcical  humour ; 
and  in  the  presence  of  the  Englishman,  when 
by  chance  he  turns  up  or  is  thought  of,  there 
is  an  invincible  impatience  and  irritation  that 
his  point  of  view  should  be  so  fixed,  his  mind 
so  literal,  and  the  freight  he  carries  so  exces- 
sive (when  you  are  sailing  in  ballast  yourself), 
and  that  he  should  seem  to  take  so  little 
notice  of  changes  in  the  wind  to  which  you 
are  nervously  sensitive. 

Nevertheless  there  is  one  gift  or  habit, 
native  to  England,  that  has  not  only  been 
preserved   in   Anierica  unchanged,   but  has 

found  there  a  more  favourable  atmosphere 

o 


194     CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

in  which  to  manifest  its  true  nature — I  mean 
the  spirit  of  free  co-operation.  The  root  of 
it  is  free  individuahty,  which  is  deeply  seated 
in  the  Enghsh  inner  man  ;  there  is  an  in- 
domitable instinct  or  mind  in  him  which  he 
perpetually  consults  and  reveres,  slow  and 
embarrassed  as  his  expression  of  it  may  be. 
But  this  free  individuality  in  the  Englishman 
is  crossed  and  biased  by  a  large  residue  of 
social  servitude.  The  church  and  the  aristo- 
cracy, entanglement  in  custom  and  privilege, 
mistrust  and  bitterness  about  particular 
grievances,  warp  the  inner  man  and  enlist  him 
against  his  interests  in  alien  causes ;  the 
straits  of  Dover  were  too  narrow,  the  shadow 
of  a  hostile  continent  was  too  oppressive,  the 
English  sod  was  soaked  with  too  many  dews 
and  cut  by  too  many  hedges,  for  each  indi- 
vidual, being  quite  master  of  himself,  to 
confront  every  other  individual  without  fear 
or  prejudice,  and  to  unite  with  him  in  the 
free  pursuit  of  whatever  aims  they  might 
find  that  they  had  in  common.  Yet  this 
slow  co-operation  of  free  men,  this  liberty 
in  democracy — the  only  sort  that  America 
possesses  or  believes  in — is  wholly  English  in 
its  personal  basis,  its  reserve,  its  tenacity, 


ENGLISH  LIBERTY  IN  AMERICA   195 

its  empiricism,  its  public  spirit,  and  its 
assurance  of  its  own  rightness ;  and  it 
deserves  to  be  called  English  always,  to 
whatever  countries  it  may  spread. 

The  omnipresence  in  America  of  this  spirit 
of  co-operation,  responsibility,  and  growth  is 
very  remarkable.  Far  from  being  neutral- 
ised by  American  dash  and  bravura,  or  lost 
in  the  opposite  instincts  of  so  many  alien 
races,  it  seems  to  be  adopted  at  once  in  the 
most  mixed  circles  and  in  the  most  novel 
predicaments.  In  America  social  servitude 
is  reduced  to  a  minimum  ;  in  fact  we  may 
almost  say  that  it  is  reduced  to  subjecting 
children  to  their  mothers  and  to  a  common 
public  education,  agencies  that  are  absolutely 
indispensable  to  produce  the  individual  and 
enable  him  to  exercise  his  personal  initiative 
effectually ;  for  after  all,  whatever  meta- 
physical egotism  may  say,  one  cannot  vote 
to  be  created.  But  once  created,  weaned, 
and  taught  to  read  and  write,  the  young 
American  can  easily  shoulder  his  knapsack 
and  choose  his  own  way  in  the  world.  He 
is  as  yet  very  little  trammelled  by  want  of 
opportunity,  an3  he  has  no  roots  to  speak 
of  in  place,  class,  or  religion.     Where  indi- 


196     CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

viduality  is  so  free,  co-operation,  when  it  is 
justified,  can  be  all  the  more  quick  and  hearty. 
Everywhere  co-operation  is  taken  for  granted, 
as  something  that  no  one  would  be  so  mean 
or  so  short-sighted  as  to  refuse.  Together 
with  the  will  to  work  and  to  prosper,  it  is  of 
the  essence  of  Americanism,  and  is  accepted 
as  such  by  all  the  unkempt  polyglot  peoples 
that  turn  to  the  new  world  with  the  pathetic 
but  manly  purpose  of  beginning  life  on  a  new 
principle.  Every  political  body,  every  public 
meeting,  every  club,  or  college,  or  athletic 
team,  is  full  of  it.  Out  it  comes  whenever 
there  is  an  accident  in  the  street  or  a  division 
in  a  church,  or  a  great  unexpected  emergency 
like  the  late  war.  The  general  instinct  is  to 
run  and  help,  to  assume  direction,  to  pull 
through  somehow  by  mutual  adaptation,  and 
by  seizing  on  the  readiest  practical  measures 
and  working  compromises.  Each  man  joins 
in  and  gives  a  helping  hand,  without  a  pre- 
conceived plan  or  a  prior  motive.  Even  the 
leader,  when  he  is  a  natural  leader  and  not  a 
professional,  has  nothing  up  his  sleeve  to  force 
on  the  rest,  in  their  obvious  good-will  and 
mental  blankness.  All  meet  in  a  genuine 
spirit  of  consultation,  eager  to  persuade  but 


ENGLISH  LIBERTY  IN  AMERICA   197 

ready  to  be  persuaded,  with  a  cheery  con- 
fidence in  their  average  abiUty,  when  a  point 
comes  up  and  is  clearly  put  before  them,  to 
decide  it  for  the  time  being,  and  to  move  on. 
It  is  implicitly  agreed,  in  every  case,  that 
disputed  questions  shall  be  put  to  a  vote, 
and  that  the  minority  will  loyally  acquiesce 
in  the  decision  of  the  majority  and  build 
henceforth  upon  it,  without  a  thought  of  ever 
retracting  it. 

Such  a  way  of  proceeding  seems  in  America 
a  matter  of  course,  because  it  is  bred  in  the 
bone,  or  imposed  by  that  permeating  social 
contagion  which  is  so  irresistible  in  a  natural 
democracy.  But  if  we  consider  human  nature 
at  large  and  the  practice  of  most  nations,  we 
shall  see  that  it  is  a  very  rare,  wonderful,  and 
unstable  convention.  It  implies  a  rather 
unimaginative  optimistic  assumption  that 
at  bottom  all  men's  interests  are  similar  and 
compatible,  and  a  rather  heroic  public  spirit 
— such  that  no  special  interest,  in  so  far  as 
it  has  to  be  overruled,  shall  rebel  and  try 
to  maintain  itself  absolutely.  In  America 
hitherto  these  conditions  happen  to  have 
been  actually  fukilled  in  an  unusual  measure. 
Interests  have  been  very  similar — to  exploit 


198     CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

business  opportunities  and  organise  public 
services  useful  to  all ;  and  these  similar 
interests  have  been  also  compatible  and 
harmonious.  A  neighbour,  even  a  com- 
petitor, where  the  field  is  so  large  and  so 
little  pre-empted,  has  more  often  proved  a 
resource  than  a  danger.  The  rich  have 
helped  the  public  more  than  they  have  fleeced 
it,  and  they  have  been  emulated  more  than 
hated  or  served  by  the  enterprising  poor. 
To  abolish  millionaires  would  have  been  to 
dash  one's  own  hopes.  The  most  opposite 
systems  of  religion  and  education  could  look 
smilingly  upon  one  another's  prosperity, 
because  the  country  could  afford  these  super- 
ficial luxuries,  having  a  constitutional  religion 
and  education  of  its  own,  which  everybody 
drank  in  unconsciously  and  which  assured 
the  moral  cohesion  of  the  people.  Impulses 
of  reason  and  kindness,  which  are  potential 
in  all  men,  under  such  circumstances  can 
become  effective ;  people  can  help  one  another 
with  no  great  sacrifice  to  themselves,  and 
minorities  can  dismiss  their  special  plans 
without  sorrow,  and  cheerfully  follow  the 
crowd  down  another  road.  It  was  because 
life    in    America    was    naturally    more    co- 


ENGLISH  LIBERTY  IN  AMERICA   199 

operative  and  more  plastic  than  in  England 
that  the  spirit  of  English  liberty,  which 
demands  co-operation  and  plasticity,  could 
appear  there  more  boldly  and  universally 
than  it  ever  did  at  home. 

English  liberty  is  a  method,  not  a  goal. 
It  is  related  to  the  value  of  human  life  very 
much  as  the  police  are  related  to  public 
morals  or  commerce  to  wealth  ;  and  it  is  no 
accident  that  the  Anglo-Saxon  race  excels  in 
commerce  and  in  the  commercial  as  dis- 
tinguished from  the  artistic  side  of  industry, 
and  that  having  policed  itself  successfully 
it  is  beginning  to  police  the  world  at  large. 
It  is  all  an  eminence  in  temper,  good-will, 
reliability,  accommodation.  Probably  some 
other  races,  such  as  the  Jews  and  Arabs, 
make  individually  better  merchants,  more 
shrewd,  patient,  and  loving  of  their  art. 
Englishmen  and  Americans  often  seem  to 
miss  or  force  opportunities,  to  play  for  quick 
returns,  or  to  settle  down  into  ponderous 
corporations  ;  for  successful  men  they  are 
not  particularly  observant,  constant,  or 
economical.  But  the  superiority  of  the 
Oriental  is  congned  to  his  private  craft;  he 
has  not  the  spirit  of  partnership.     In  English 


200      CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

civilisation  the  individual  is  neutralised  ;  it 
does  not  matter  so  much  even  in  high  places 
if  he  is  rather  stupid  or  rather  cheap  ;  public 
spirit  sustains  him,  and  he  becomes  its  instru- 
ment all  the  more  readily,  perhaps,  for  not 
being  very  distinguished  or  clear-headed  in 
himself.  The  community  prospers  ;  comfort 
and  science,  good  manners  and  generous 
feelings  are  diffused  among  the  people,  with- 
out the  aid  of  that  foresight  and  cunning 
direction  which  sometimes  give  a  temporary 
advantage  to  a  rival  system  like  the  German. 
In  the  end,  adaptation  to  the  world  at  large, 
where  so  much  is  hidden  and  unintelligible, 
is  only  possible  piecemeal,  by  groping  with  a 
genuine  indetermination  in  one's  aims.  Its 
very  looseness  gives  the  English  method  its 
lien  on  the  future.  To  dominate  the  world 
co-operation  is  better  than  policy,  and  em- 
piricism safer  than  inspiration.  Anglo-Saxon 
imperialism  is  unintended ;  military  con- 
quests are  incidental  to  it  and  often  not 
maintained ;  it  subsists  by  a  mechanical 
equilibrium  of  habits  and  interests,  in  which 
every  colony,  province,  or  protectorate  has 
a  different  status.  It  has  a  commercial  and 
missionary    quality,    and    is    essentially    an 


ENGLISH  LIBERTY  IN  AMERICA  201 

invitation  to  pull  together — an  invitation 
which  many  nations  may  be  incapable  of 
accepting  or  even  of  understanding,  or  which 
they  may  deeply  scorn,  because  it  involves  a 
surrender  of  absolute  liberty  on  their  part ; 
but  whether  accepted  or  rejected,  it  is  an 
offer  of  co-operation,  a  project  for  a  limited 
partnership,  not  a  complete  plan  of  life  to  be 
imposed  on  anybody. 

It  is  a  wise  instinct,  in  dealing  with 
foreigners  or  with  material  things  (which 
are  foreigners  to  the  mind),  to  limit  oneself 
in  this  way  to  establishing  external  relations, 
partial  mutual  adjustments,  with  a  great 
residuum  of  independence  and  reserve  ;  if 
you  attempt  more  you  will  achieve  less ; 
your  interpretations  will  become  chimerical 
and  your  regimen  odious.  So  deep-seated 
is  this  prudent  instinct  in  the  English  nature 
that  it  appears  even  at  home  ;  most  of  the 
concrete  things  which  English  genius  has 
produced  are  expedients.  Its  spiritual 
treasures  are  hardly  possessions,  except  as 
character  is  a  possession  ;  they  are  rather 
a  standard  of  life,  a  promise,  an  insurance. 
English  poetry  aad  fiction  form  an  exception  ; 
the  very  incoherence  and  artlessness  which 


202      CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

they  share  with  so  much  else  that  is  EngUsh 
lend  them  an  absolute  value  as  an  expression. 
They  are  the  mirror  and  prattle  of  the  inner 
man — a  boyish  spirit  astray  in  the  green 
earth  it  loves,  rich  in  wonder,  perplexity, 
valour,  and  faith,  given  to  opinionated  little 
prejudices,  but  withal  sensitive  and  candid, 
and  often  laden,  as  in  Hamlet,  with  exquisite 
music,  tender  humour,  and  tragic  self- 
knowledge.  But  apart  from  the  literature 
that  simply  utters  the  inner  man,  no  one 
considering  the  English  language,  the  English 
church,  or  English  philosophy,  or  considering 
the  common  law  and  parliamentary  govern- 
ment, would  take  them  for  perfect  realisa- 
tions of  art  or  truth  or  an  ideal  polity. 
Institutions  so  jumbled  and  limping  could 
never  have  been  planned ;  they  can  never  be 
transferred  to  another  setting,  or  adopted 
bodily  ;  but  special  circumstances  and  con- 
trary currents  have  given  them  birth,  and 
they  are  accepted  and  prized,  where  they 
are  native,  for  keeping  the  door  open  to  a 
great  volume  and  variety  of  goods,  at  a 
moderate  cost  of  danger  and  absurdity. 

Of  course  no  product  of  mind  is  merely 
an  expedient ;  all  are  concomitantly  expres- 


ENGLISH  LIBERTY  IN  AMERICA  203 

sions  of  temperament ;  there  is  something 
in  their  manner  of  being  practical  which  is 
poetical  and  catches  the  rhythm  of  the 
heart.  In  this  way  anything  foreign — and 
almost  all  the  elements  of  civilisation  in 
England  and  America  are  foreign — when 
it  is  adopted  and  acclimatised,  takes  on  a 
native  accent,  especially  on  English  lips ; 
like  the  Latin  words  in  the  language,  it 
becomes  thoroughly  English  in  texture.  The 
English  Bible,  again,  with  its  archaic  home- 
liness and  majesty,  sets  the  mind  brooding, 
not  less  than  the  old  ballad  most  redolent  of 
the  native  past  and  the  native  imagination  ; 
it  fills  the  memory  with  solemn  and  pungent 
phrases  ;  and  this  incidental  spirit  of  poetry 
in  which  it  comes  to  be  clothed  is  a  self- 
revelation  perhaps  more  pertinent  and  wel- 
come to  the  people  than  the  alien  revelations 
it  professes  to  transmit.  English  law  and 
parliaments,  too,  would  be  very  unjustly 
judged  if  judged  as  practical  contrivances 
only ;  they  satisfy  at  the  same  time  the 
moral  interest  people  have  in  uttering  and 
enforcing  their  feelings.  These  institutions 
are  ceremonious,  almost  sacramental;  they 
are  instinct  with  a  dramatic  spirit  deeper 


204     CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

and  more  vital  than  their  utihty.  Enghsh- 
men  and  Americans  love  debate  ;  they  love 
sitting  round  a  table  as  if  in  consultation, 
even  when  the  chairman  has  pulled  the 
wires  and  settled  everything  beforehand,  and 
when  each  of  the  participants  listens  only  to 
his  own  remarks  and  votes  according  to  his 
party.  They  love  committees  and  commis- 
sions ;  they  love  public  dinners  with  after- 
dinner  speeches,  those  stammering  com- 
pounds of  facetiousness,  platitude,  and  busi- 
ness. How  distressing  such  speeches  usually 
are,  and  how  helplessly  prolonged,  does  not 
escape  anybody ;  yet  every  one  demands 
them  notwithstanding,  because  in  pumping 
them  up  or  sitting  through  them  he  feels  he 
is  leading  the  political  life.  A  public  man 
must  show  himself  in  public,  even  if  not 
to  advantage.  The  moral  expressiveness  of 
such  institutions  also  helps  to  redeem  their 
clumsy  procedure  ;  they  would  not  be  use- 
ful, nor  work  at  all  as  they  should,  if  people 
did  not  smack  their  lips  over  them  and  feel 
a  profound  pleasure  in  carrying  them  out. 
Without  the  English  spirit,  without  the 
faculty  of  making  themselves  believe  in 
public  what  they  never  feel  in  private,  with- 


ENGLISH  LIBERTY  IN  AMERICA  205 

out  the  habit  of  clubbing  together  and  facing 
facts,  and  feehng  duty  in  a  cautious,  con- 
sultative, experimental  way,  English  liberties 
forfeit  their  practical  value  ;  as  we  see  when 
they  are  extended  to  a  volatile  histrionic 
people  like  the  Irish,  or  when  a  jury  in 
France,  instead  of  pronouncing  simply  on 
matters  of  fact  and  the  credibility  of  wit- 
nesses, rushes  in  the  heat  of  its  patriotism 
to  carry  out,  by  its  verdict,  some  political 
policy. 

The  practice  of  English  liberty  presupposes 
two  things  :  that  all  concerned  are  funda- 
mentally unanimous,  and  that  each  has  a 
plastic  nature,  which  he  is  willing  to  modify. 
If  fundamental  unanimity  is  lacking  and  all 
are  not  making  in  the  same  general  direction, 
there  can  be  no  honest  co-operation,  no 
satisfying  compromise.  Every  concession, 
under  such  circumstances,  would  be  a 
temporary  one,  to  be  retracted  at  the  first 
favourable  moment ;  it  would  amount  to 
a  mutilation  of  one's  essential  nature,  a 
partial  surrender  of  life,  liberty,  and  happi- 
ness, tolerable  for  a  time,  perhaps,  as  the 
lesser  of  two  evifs,  but  involving  a  perpetual 
sullen  opposition  and  hatred.     To  put  things 


206      CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

to  a  vote,  and  to  accept  unreservedly  the 
decision  of  the  majority,  are  points  essential 
to  the  English  system  ;  but  they  would  be 
absurd  if  fundamental  agreement  were  not 
presupposed.  Every  decision  that  the 
majority  could  conceivably  arrive  at  must 
leave  it  still  possible  for  the  minority  to 
live  and  prosper,  even  if  not  exactly  in  the 
way  they  wished.  Were  this  not  the  case,  a 
decision  by  vote  would  be  as  alien  a  fatality 
to  any  minority  as  the  decree  of  a  foreign 
tyrant,  and  at  every  election  the  right  of 
rebellion  would  come  into  play.  In  a  hearty 
and  sound  democracy  all  questions  at  issue 
must  be  minor  matters  ;  fundamentals  must 
have  been  silently  agreed  upon  and  taken 
for  granted  when  the  democracy  arose.  To 
leave  a  decision  to  the  majority  is  like  leaving 
it  to  chance — a  fatal  procedure  unless  one  is 
willing  to  have  it  either  way.  You  must  be 
able  to  risk  losing  the  toss;  and  if  you  do 
you  will  acquiesce  all  the  more  readily  in  the 
result,  because,  unless  the  winners  cheated 
at  the  game,  they  had  no  more  influence 
on  it  than  yourself — namely  none,  or  very 
little.  You  acquiesce  in  democracy  on  the 
same  conditions  and  for  the  same  reasons, 


ENGLISH  LIBERTY  IN  AMERICA  207 

and  perhaps  a  little  more  cheerfully,  because 
there  is  an  infinitesimally  better  chance  of 
winning  on  the  average  ;  but  even  then  the 
enormity  of  the  risk  involved  would  be 
intolerable  if  anything  of  vital  importance 
was  at  stake.  It  is  therefore  actually  re- 
quired that  juries,  whose  decisions  may  really 
be  of  moment,  should  be  unanimous  ;  and 
parliaments  and  elections  are  never  more 
satisfactory  than  when  a  wave  of  national 
feeling  runs  through  them  and  there  is 
no  longer  any  minority  nor  any  need  of 
voting. 

Free  government  works  well  in  proportion 
as  government  is  superfluous.  That  most 
parliamentary  measures  should  be  trivial  or 
technical,  and  really  devised  and  debated 
only  in  government  offices,  and  that  govern- 
ment in  America  should  so  long  have  been 
carried  on  in  the  shade,  by  persons  of  no 
name  or  dignity,  is  no  anomaly.  On  the 
contrary,  like  the  good  fortune  of  those  who 
never  hear  of  the  police,  it  is  all  a  sign  that 
co-operative  liberty  is  working  well  and 
rendering  overt  government  unnecessary. 
Sometimes  kinship  and  opportunity  carry 
a  whole  nation  before  the  wind ;    but  this 


208     CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

happy  unison  belongs  rather  to  the  dawn  of 
national  life,  when  similar  tasks  absorb  all 
individual  energies.  If  it  is  to  be  maintained 
after  lines  of  moral  cleavage  appear,  and  is 
to  be  compatible  with  variety  and  distinction 
of  character,  all  further  developments  must 
be  democratically  controlled  and  must  re- 
main, as  it  were,  in  a  state  of  fusion.  Variety 
and  distinction  must  not  become  arbitrary 
and  irresponsible.  They  must  take  direc- 
tions that  will  not  mar  the  general  harmony, 
and  no  interest  must  be  carried  so  far  as  to 
lose  sight  of  the  rest.  Science  and  art,  in 
such  a  vital  democracy,  should  remain  popu- 
lar, helpful,  bracing ;  religion  should  be 
broadly  national  and  in  the  spirit  of  the 
times.  The  variety  and  distinction  allowed 
must  be  only  variety  and  distinction  of 
service.  If  they  ever  became  a  real  distinc- 
tion and  variety  of  life,  if  they  arrogated  to 
themselves  an  absolute  liberty,  they  would 
shatter  the  unity  of  the  democratic  spirit 
and  destroy  its  moral  authority. 

The  levelling  tendency  of  English  liberty 
(inevitable  if  plastic  natures  are  to  co-operate 
and  to  make  permanent  concessions  to  one 
another's  instincts)  comes  out  more  clearly 


ENGLISH  LIBERTY  IN  AMERICA  209 

in  America  than  in  England  itself.  In 
England  there  are  still  castles  and  rural 
retreats,  there  are  still  social  islands  within 
the  Island,  where  special  classes  may  nurse 
particular  allegiances.  America  is  all  one 
prairie,  swept  by  a  universal  tornado. 
Although  it  has  always  thought  itself  in  an 
eminent  sense  the  land  of  freedom,  even 
when  it  was  covered  with  slaves,  there  is  no 
country  in  which  people  live  under  more 
overpowering  compulsions.  The  prohibi- 
tions, although  important  and  growing,  are 
not  yet,  perhaps,  so  many  or  so  blatant  as 
in  some  other  countries  ;  but  prohibitions 
are  less  galling  than  compulsions.  What 
can  be  forbidden  specifically — bigamy,  for 
instance,  or  heresy — may  be  avoided  by  a 
prudent  man  without  renouncing  the  whole 
movement  of  life  and  mind  which,  if  carried 
beyond  a  certain  point,  would  end  in  those 
trespasses  against  convention.  He  can  in- 
dulge in  hypothesis  or  gallantry  without 
falling  foul  of  the  positive  law,  which  indeed 
may  even  stimulate  his  interest  and  ingenuity 
by  suggesting  some  indirect  means  of  satis- 
faction. On  the  other  hand,  what  is  exacted 
cuts  deeper  ;   it  creates  habits  which  overlay 


210     CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

nature,  and  every  faculty  is  atrophied  that 
does  not  conform  with  them.  If,  for  in- 
stance, I  am  compelled  to  be  in  an  office 
(and  up  to  business,  too)  from  early  morning 
to  late  afternoon,  with  long  journeys  in 
thundering  and  sweltering  trains  before  and 
after  and  a  flying  shot  at  a  quick  lunch 
between,  I  am  caught  and  held  both  in  soul 
and  body  ;  and  except  for  the  freedom  to 
work  and  to  rise  by  that  work — which  may 
be  very  interesting  in  itself — I  am  not 
suffered  to  exist  morally  at  all.  My  evenings 
will  be  drowsy,  my  Sundays  tedious,  and 
after  a  few  days'  holiday  I  shall  be  wishing 
to  get  back  to  business.  Here  is  as  narrow 
a  path  left  open  to  freedom  as  is  left  open 
in  a  monastic  establishment,  where  bell  and 
book  keep  your  attention  fixed  at  all  hours 
upon  the  hard  work  of  salvation — an  infinite 
vista,  certainly,  if  your  soul  was  not  made 
to  look  another  way.  Those,  too,  who  may 
escape  this  crushing  routine — the  invalids, 
the  ladies,  the  fops — are  none  the  less  pre- 
vented by  it  from  doing  anything  else  with 
success  or  with  a  good  conscience ;  the 
bubbles  also  must  swim  with  the  stream. 
Even  what  is  best  in  American  life  is  com- 


ENGLISH  LIBERTY  IN  AMERICA  211 

pulsory — the  idealism,  the  zeal,  the  beautiful 
happy  unison  of  its  great  moments.  You 
must  wave,  you  must  cheer,  you  must  push 
with  the  irresistible  crowd;  otherwise  you 
will  feel  like  a  traitor,  a  soulless  outcast,  a 
deserted  ship  high  and  dry  on  the  shore. 
In  America  there  is  but  one  way  of  being 
saved,  though  it  is  not  peculiar  to  any  of 
the  official  religions,  which  themselves  must 
silently  conform  to  the  national  orthodoxy, 
or  else  become  impotent  and  merely  orna- 
mental. This  national  faith  and  morality 
are  vague  in  idea,  but  inexorable  in  spirit ; 
they  are  the  gospel  of  work  and  the  belief 
in  progress.  By  them,  in  a  country  where 
all  men  are  free,  every  man  finds  that  what 
most  matters  has  been  settled  for  him 
beforehand. 

Nevertheless,  American  life  is  free  as  a 
whole,  because  it  is  mobile,  because  every 
atom  that  swims  in  it  has  a  momentum  of 
its  own  which  is  felt  and  respected  through- 
out the  mass,  like  the  weight  of  an  atom 
in  the  solar  system,  even  if  the  deflection 
it  may  cause  is  infinitesimal.  In  temper 
America  is  docile  and  not  at  all  tyrannical ; 
it  has  not  predetermined  its  career,  and  its 


212     CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

merciless  momentum  is  a  passive  resultant. 
Like  some  Mississippi  or  Niagara,  it  rolls 
its  myriad  drops  gently  onward,  being 
but  the  suction  and  pressure  which  they 
exercise  on  one  another.  Any  tremulous 
thought  or  playful  experiment  anywhere 
may  be  a  first  symptom  of  great  changes, 
and  may  seem  to  precipitate  the  cataract 
in  a  new  direction.  Any  snowflake  in  a 
boy's  sky  may  become  the  centre  for  his 
boule  de  neige,  his  prodigious  fortune ;  but 
the  monster  will  melt  as  easily  as  it  grew, 
and  leaves  nobody  poorer  for  having  existed. 
In  America  there  is  duty  everywhere,  but 
everywhere  also  there  is  light.  I  do  not 
mean  superior  understanding  or  even  moder- 
ately wide  knowledge,  but  openness  to  light, 
an  evident  joy  in  seeing  things  clearly  and 
doing  them  briskly,  which  would  amount  to 
a  veritable  triumph  of  art  and  reason  if  the 
affairs  in  which  it  came  into  play  were 
central  and  important.  The  American  may 
give  an  exorbitant  value  to  subsidiary  things, 
but  his  error  comes  of  haste  in  praising 
what  he  possesses,  and  trusting  the  first 
praises  he  hears.  He  can  detect  sharp 
practices,   because   he   is   capable   of  them, 


ENGLISH  LIBERTY  IN  AMERICA  213 

but  vanity  or  wickedness  in  the  ultimate 
aims  of  a  man,  including  himself,  he  cannot 
detect,  because  he  is  ingenuous  in  that 
sphere.  He  thinks  life  splendid  and  blame- 
less, without  stopping  to  consider  how  far 
folly  and  malice  may  be  inherent  in  it.  He 
feels  that  he  himself  has  nothing  to  dread, 
nothing  to  hide  or  apologise  for ;  and  if  he 
is  arrogant  in  his  ignorance,  there  is  often 
a  twinkle  in  his  eye  when  he  is  most  boast- 
ful. Perhaps  he  suspects  that  he  is  making 
a  fool  of  himself,  and  he  challenges  the 
world  to  prove  it ;  and  his  innocence  is 
quickly  gone  when  he  is  once  convinced  that 
it  exists.  Accordingly  the  American  ortho- 
doxy, though  imperious,  is  not  unyielding. 
It  has  a  keener  sense  for  destiny  than  for 
policy.  It  is  confident  of  a  happy  and 
triumphant  future,  which  it  would  be  shame- 
ful in  any  man  to  refuse  to  work  for  and  to 
share  ;  but  it  cannot  prefigure  what  that 
bright  future  is  to  be.  While  it  works 
feverishly  in  outward  matters,  inwardly  it 
only  watches  and  waits  ;  and  it  feels  tenderly 
towards  the  unexpressed  impulses  in  its 
bosom,  like  a  mother  towards  her  unborn 
young. 


214     CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

There  is  a  mystical  conviction,  expressed 
in  Anglo-Saxon  life  and  philosophy,  that  our 
labours,  even  when  they  end  in  failure,  con- 
tribute to  some  ulterior  achievement  in  which 
it  is  well  they  should  be  submerged.  This 
Anglo-Saxon  piety,  in  the  form  of  trust  and 
adaptability,  reaches  somewhat  the  same  in- 
sight that  more  speculative  religions  have 
reached  through  asceticism,  the  insight  that 
we  must  renounce  our  wills  and  deny  our- 
selves. But  to  have  a  will  remains  essential 
to  animals,  and  having  a  will  we  must  kick 
against  the  pricks,  even  if  philosophy  thinks 
it  foolish  of  us.  The  spirit  in  which  parties 
and  nations  beyond  the  pale  of  English 
liberty  confront  one  another  is  not  motherly 
nor  brotherly  nor  Christian.  Their  valor- 
ousness  and  morality  consist  in  their  in- 
domitable egotism.  The  liberty  they  want 
is  absolute  liberty,  a  desire  which  is  quite 
primitive.  It  may  be  identified  with  the 
love  of  life  which  animates  all  creation,  or 
with  the  pursuit  of  happiness  which  all  men 
would  be  engaged  in  if  they  were  rational. 
Indeed,  it  might  even  be  identified  with  the 
first  law  of  motion,  that  all  bodies,  if  left 
free,  persevere  in  that  state  of  rest,  or  of 


ENGLISH  LIBERTY  IN  AMERICA  215 

motion  in  a  straight  line,  in  which  they 
happen  to  find  themselves.  The  enemies  of 
this  primitive  freedom  are  all  such  external 
forces  as  make  it  deviate  from  the  course 
it  is  in  the  habit  of  taking  or  is  inclined  to 
take ;  and  when  people  begin  to  reflect 
upon  their  condition,  they  protest  against 
this  alien  tyranny,  and  contrast  in  fancy 
what  they  would  do  if  they  were  free  with 
what  under  duress  they  are  actually  doing. 
All  human  struggles  are  inspired  by  what,  in 
this  sense,  is  the  love  of  freedom.  Even 
craving  for  power  and  possessions  may  be 
regarded  as  the  love  of  a  free  life  on  a 
larger  scale,  for  which  more  instruments  and 
resources  are  needed.  The  apologists  of 
absolute  will  are  not  slow,  for  instance, 
to  tell  us  that  Germany  in  her  laborious 
ambitions  has  been  pursuing  the  highest 
form  of  freedom,  which  can  be  attained  only 
by  organising  all  the  resources  of  the  world, 
and  the  souls  of  all  subsidiary  nations, 
around  one  luminous  centre  of  direction 
and  self-consciousness,  such  as  the  Prussian 
government  was  eminently  fitted  to  furnish. 
Freedom  to  exercise  absolute  will  method- 
ically    seems    to    them    much    better    than 


216     CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

English  liberty,   because  it  knows  what  it 
wants,  pursues  it  intelligently,  and  does  not 
rely  for  success  on  some  measure  of  goodness 
in  mankind  at  large.     English  liberty  is  so 
trustful!     It  moves  by  a  series   of  checks, 
mutual  concessions,  and  limited  satisfactions; 
it  counts  on  chivalry,  sportsmanship,  brotherly 
love,  and  on  that  rarest  and  least  lucrative  of 
virtues,  fair-mindedness  :  it  is  a  broad-based, 
stupid,  blind  adventure,  groping  towards  an 
unknown   goal.     Who   but   an   Englishman 
would  think  of  such  a  thing  !     A  fanatic,  a 
poet,   a  doctrinaire,  a  dilettante  —  any  one 
who  has  a  fixed  aim  and  clear  passions — 
will  not  relish  English  liberty.     It  will  seem 
bitter  irony   to   him   to   give   the   name   of 
liberty  to   something   so   muffled,  exacting, 
and  oppressive.      In  fact  English  liberty  is 
a  positive  infringement  and  surrender  of  the 
freedom  most  fought  for  and  most  praised  in 
the  past.     It  makes  impossible  the  sort  of 
liberty    for    which    the    Spartans    died    at 
Thermopylae,  or  the  Christian  martyrs  in  the 
arena,   or  the  Protestant  reformers  at  the 
stake ;     for   these   people   all   died   because 
they  would  not  co-operate,  because  they  were 
not  plastic  and  would  never  consent  to  lead 


ENGLISH  LIBERTY  IN  AMERICA  217 

the  life  dear  or  at  least  customary  to  other 
men.     They  insisted  on  being  utterly  different 
and  independent  and  inflexible  in  their  chosen 
systems,  and  aspired  either  to  destroy  the 
society  round  them  or  at  least  to  insulate 
themselves  in  the  midst   of  it,  and  live  a 
jealous,  private,  unstained  life  of  their  own 
within  their  city  walls  or  mystical  conclaves. 
Any  one  who  passionately  loves  his  particular 
country  or  passionately  believes  in  his  parti- 
cular religion  cannot  be  content  with  less 
liberty  or  more  democracy  than  that ;    he 
must  be  free  to  live  absolutely  according  to 
his    ideal,    and   no    hostile   votes,    no   alien 
interests,  must  call  on  him  to  deviate  from 
it    by    one    iota.     Such    was    the    claim    to 
religious  liberty  which  has  played  so  large 
a  part  in  the  revolutions  and  divisions  of  the 
western  world.     Every  new  heresy  professed 
to  be  orthodoxy  itself,  purified  and  restored  ; 
and  woe  to  all  backsliders  from  the  reformed 
faith  1     Even  the  popes,  without  thinking  to 
be  ironical,  have  often  raised  a  wail  for  liberty. 
Such  too  was  the  aspiration  of  those  mediaeval 
cities  and  barons  who  fought  for  their  liberties 
and  rights.     Such  was  the  aspiration  even  of 
the   American   declaration   of  independence 


218     CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

and  the  American  constitution  :  cast-iron 
documents,  if  only  the  spirit  of  co-operative 
EngUsh  Hberty  had  not  been  there  to  expand, 
embosom,  soften,  or  transform  them.  So 
the  French  revolution  and  the  Russian  one 
of  to-day  have  aimed  at  establishing  society 
once  for  all  on  some  eternally  just  principle, 
and  at  abolishing  all  traditions,  interests, 
faiths,  and  even  words  that  did  not  belong 
to  their  system.  Liberty,  for  all  these 
pensive  or  rabid  apostles  of  liberty,  meant 
liberty  for  themselves  to  be  just  so,  and 
to  remain  just  so  for  ever,  together  with 
the  most  vehement  defiance  of  anybody 
who  might  ask  them,  for  the  sake  of 
harmony,  to  be  a  little  different.  They 
summoned  every  man  to  become  free  in 
exactly  their  own  fashion,  or  have  his  head 
cut  off. 

Of  course,  to  many  an  individual,  life 
even  in  any  such  free  city  or  free  church, 
fiercely  jealous  of  its  political  independence 
and  moral  purity,  would  prove  to  be  a  grievous 
servitude ;  and  there  has  always  been  a 
sprinkling  of  rebels  and  martyrs  and  scornful 
philosophers  protesting  and  fuming  against 
their  ultra-independent   and   nothing-if-not- 


ENGLISH  LIBERTY  IN  AMERICA  219 

protesting  sects.  To  co-operate  with  any- 
body seems  to  these  esprits  forts  contamina- 
tion, so  sensitive  are  they  to  any  deviation 
from  the  true  north  which  their  compass 
might  suffer  through  the  neighbourhood  of 
any  human  magnet.  If  it  is  a  weakness  to 
be  subject  to  influence,  it  is  an  imprudence 
to  expose  oneself  to  it ;  and  to  be  subject 
to  influence  seems  ignominious  to  any  one 
whose  inward  monitor  is  perfectly  articulate 
and  determined.  A  certain  vagueness  of 
soul,  together  with  a  great  gregariousness  and 
tendency  to  be  moulded  by  example  and  by 
prevalent  opinion,  is  requisite  for  feeling  free 
under  English  liberty.  You  must  find  the 
majority  right  enough  to  live  with ;  you 
must  give  up  lost  causes  ;  you  must  be  will- 
ing to  put  your  favourite  notions  to  sleep  in 
the  family  cradle  of  convention.  Enthusiasts 
for  democracy,  peace,  and  a  league  of  nations 
should  not  deceive  themselves  ;  they  are  not 
everybody's  friends  ;  they  are  the  enemies 
of  what  is  deepest  and  most  primitive  in 
everybody.  They  inspire  undying  hatred  in 
every  untamable  people  and  every  absolute 
soul.  . 

It  is  in  the  nature  of  wild  animal  life  to 


220     CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

be  ferocious  or  patient,  and  in  either  case 
heroic  and  uncompromising.  It  is  inevitable, 
in  the  beginning,  that  each  person  or  faction 
should  come  into  the  lists  to  serve  some 
express  interest,  which  in  itself  may  be 
perfectly  noble  and  generous.  But  these 
interests  are  posited  alone  and  in  all  their 
ultimate  consequences.  The  parties  meet, 
however  diplomatic  their  procedure,  as  buyers 
and  sellers  bargain  in  primitive  markets. 
Each  has  a  fixed  programme  or,  as  he 
perhaps  calls  it,  an  ideal ;  and  when  he  has 
got  as  much  as  he  can  get  to-day,  he  will 
return  to  the  charge  to-morrow,  with  absol- 
utely unchanged  purpose.  All  opposed 
parties  he  regards  as  sheer  enemies  to  be 
beaten  down,  driven  off,  and  ultimately  con- 
verted or  destroyed.  Meantime  he  practises 
political  craft,  of  which  the  climax  is  war ; 
a  craft  not  confined  to  priests,  though  they 
are  good  at  it,  but  common  to  every  mis- 
sionary, agitator,  and  philosophical  politician 
who  operates  in  view  of  some  vested  interest 
or  inflexible  plan,  in  the  very  un-English 
spirit  of  intrigue,  cajolery,  eloquence,  and 
dissimulation.  His  art  is  to  worm  his  way 
forward,  using  people's  passions  to  further 


ENGLISH  LIBERTY  IN  AMERICA  221 

his  own  ends,  carrying  them  off  their  feet  in 
a  wave  of  enthusiasm,  when  that  is  feasible, 
and  when  it  is  not,  recommending  his  cause 
by  insidious  half-measures,  flattery  of  private 
interests,  confidence-tricks,  and  amiable  sug- 
gestions, until  he  has  put  his  entangled 
victims  in  his  pocket ;  or  when  he  feels 
strong  enough,  brow-beating  and  intimidat- 
ing them  into  silence.  Such  is  the  inevitable 
practice  of  every  prophet  who  heralds  an 
absolute  system,  political  or  religious,  and 
who  pursues  the  unqualified  domination  of 
principles  which  he  thinks  right  in  them- 
selves and  of  a  will  which  is  self-justified 
and  irresponsible. 

Why,  we  may  ask,  are  people  so  ready  to 
set  up  absolute  claims,  when  their  resources 
are  obviously  so  limited  that  permanent 
success  is  impossible,  and  their  will  itself,  in 
reality,  is  so  fragile  that  it  abandons  each  of 
its  dreams  even  before  it  learns  that  it  cannot 
be  realised  ?  The  reason  is  that  the  feebler, 
more  ignorant,  and  more  childlike  an  impulse 
is,  the  less  it  can  restrain  itself  or  surrender 
a  part  of  its  desire  in  order  the  better  to 
attain  the  rest.  •In  most  nations  and  most 
philosophies  the  intellect  is  rushed ;    it  is 


222     CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

swept  forward  and  enamoured  by  the  first 
glimpses  it  gets  of  anything  good.  The 
dogmas  thus  precipitated  seem  to  reUeve 
the  will  of  all  risks  and  to  guarantee  its  enter- 
prises ;  whereas  in  fact  they  are  rendering 
every  peril  tragic  by  blinding  us  to  it,  and 
every  vain  hope  incorrigible.  A  happy  shy- 
ness in  the  English  mind,  a  certain  torpor 
and  lateness  in  its  utterance,  have  largely 
saved  it  from  this  calamity,  and  just  because 
it  is  not  brilliant  it  is  safe.  Being  reticent, 
it  remains  fertile  ;  being  vague  in  its  destina- 
tion, it  can  turn  at  each  corner  down  the 
most  inviting  road.  In  this  race  the  intellect 
has  chosen  the  part  of  prudence,  leaving 
courage  to  the  will,  where  courage  is  indis- 
pensable. How  much  more  becoming  and 
fortunate  is  this  balance  of  faculties  for  an 
earthly  being  than  an  intellect  that  scales 
the  heavens,  refuting  and  proving  everything, 
while  the  will  dares  to  attempt  and  to  reform 
nothing,  but  fritters  itself  away  in  sloth, 
petty  malice,  and  irony  !  In  the  English 
character  modesty  and  boldness  appear  in 
the  right  places  and  in  a  just  measure. 
Manliness  ventures  to  act  without  pretending 
to  be  sure  of  the  issue  ;   it  does  not  cry  that 


ENGLISH  LIBERTY  IN  AMERICA  223 

all  is  sure,  in  order  to  cover  up  the  mortal 
perils  of  finitude ;  and  manliness  has  its 
reward  in  the  joys  of  exploration  and 
comradeship. 

It  is  this  massive  malleable  character, 
this  vigorous  moral  youth,  that  renders  co- 
operation possible  and  progressive.  When 
interests  are  fully  articulate  and  fixed,  co- 
operation is  a  sort  of  mathematical  problem  ; 
up  to  a  certain  precise  limit,  people  can 
obviously  help  one  another  by  summing  their 
efforts,  like  sailors  pulling  at  a  rope,  or  by  a 
division  of  labour ;  they  can  obviously  help 
one  another  when  thereby  they  are  helping 
themselves.  But  beyond  that,  there  can  be 
nothing  but  mutual  indifference  or  eternal 
hostility.  This  is  the  old  way  of  the  world. 
Most  of  the  lower  animals,  although  they  run 
through  surprising  transformations  during 
their  growth,  seem  to  reach  maturity  by  a 
predetermined  method  and  in  a  predeter- 
mined form.  Nature  does  everything  for 
them  and  experience  nothing,  and  they  live 
or  die,  as  the  case  may  be,  true  to  their 
innate  character.  Mankind,  on  the  contrary, 
and  especially  ttie  English  races,  seem  to 
reach   physical   maturity   still   morally   im- 


224     CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

mature ;  they  need  to  be  finished  by  educa- 
tion, experience,  external  influences.  What 
so  often  spoils  other  creatures  improves  them. 
If  left  to  themselves  and  untrained,  they 
remain  all  their  lives  stupid  and  coarse, 
with  no  natural  joy  but  drunkenness  ;  but 
nurseries  and  schools  and  churches  and  social 
conventions  can  turn  them  into  the  most 
refined  and  exquisite  of  men,  and  admirably 
intelligent  too,  in  a  cautious  and  special 
fashion.  They  may  never  become,  for  all 
their  pains,  so  agile,  graceful,  and  sure  as 
many  an  animal  or  a  priori  man  is  without 
trouble,  but  they  acquire  more  representa- 
tive minds  and  a  greater  range  of  material 
knowledge.  Such  completion,  in  the  open 
air,  of  characters  only  half-formed  in  the 
womb  may  go  on  in  some  chance  direction, 
or  it  may  go  on  in  the  direction  of  a  greater 
social  harmony,  that  is,  in  whatever  direction 
is  suggested  to  each  man  by  the  suasion  of 
his  neighbours.  Society  is  a  second  mother 
to  these  souls  ;  and  the  instincts  of  many 
animals  would  remain  inchoate  if  the  great 
instinct  of  imitation  did  not  intervene  and 
enable  them  to  learn  by  example.  Develop- 
ment   in    this    case    involves    assimilation ; 


ENGLISH  LIBERTY  IN  AMERICA  225 

characters  are  moulded  by  contagion  and 
educated  by  democracy.  The  sphere  of 
unanimity  tends  to  grow  larger,  and  to 
reduce  the  margin  of  diversity  to  insig- 
nificance. The  result  is  an  ever-increasing 
moral  unison,  which  is  the  simplest  form  of 
moral  harmony  and  emotionally  the  most 
coercive. 

Democracy  is  often  mentioned  in  the  same 
breath  with  liberty,  as  if  they  meant  the 
same  thing ;  and  both  are  sometimes  identi- 
fied with  the  sort  of  elective  government  that 
prevails  in  Great  Britain  and  the  United 
States.  But  just  as  English  liberty  seems 
servitude  to  some  people  because  it  requires 
them  to  co-operate,  to  submit  to  the  majority, 
and  to  grow  like  them,  so  English  democracy 
seems  tyranny  to  the  wayward  masses, 
because  it  is  constitutional,  historical,  and 
sacred,  narrowing  down  the  power  of  any 
group  of  people  at  any  time  to  voting  for  one 
of  two  or  three  candidates  for  office,  or  to 
saying  yes  or  no  to  some  specific  proposal — 
both  the  proposals  and  the  candidates  being 
set  before  them  by  an  invisible  agency  ;  and 
fate  was  never  more  inexorable  or  blinder 
than  is  the  grinding  of  this  ponderous  political 

Q 


226     CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

mill,  where  routine,  nepotism,  pique,  and 
swagger,  with  love  of  office  and  money,  turn 
all  the  wheels.  And  the  worst  of  it  is  that 
the  revolutionary  parties  that  oppose  this 
historical  machine  repeat  all  its  abuses,  or 
even  aggravate  them.  It  would  be  well  if 
people  in  England  and  America  woke  up  to 
the  fact  that  it  is  in  the  name  of  natural 
liberty  and  direct  democracy  that  enemies 
both  within  and  without  are  already  rising 
up  against  their  democracy  and  their  liberty. 
Just  as  the  Papacy  once  threatened  English 
liberties,  because  it  would  maintain  one 
inflexible  international  religion  over  all  men, 
so  now  an  international  democracy  of  the 
disinherited  many,  led  by  the  disinherited 
few,  threatens  English  liberties  again,  since 
it  would  abolish  those  private  interests  which 
are  the  factors  in  any  co-operation,  and 
would  reduce  everybody  to  forced  member- 
ship and  forced  service  in  one  universal  flock, 
without  property,  family,  country,  or  religion. 
That  life  under  such  a  system  might  have  its 
comforts,  its  arts,  and  its  atomic  liberties,  is 
certain,  just  as  under  the  Catholic  system  it 
had  its  virtues  and  consolations  ;  but  both 
systems  presuppose  the  universality  of  a  type 


ENGLISH  LIBERTY  IN  AMERICA  227 

of  human  nature  which  is  not  EngUsh,  and 
perhaps  not  human. 

The  great  advantage  of  EngKsh  hberty 
is  that  it  is  in  harmony  with  the  nature  of 
things ;  and  when  hving  beings  have  managed 
to  adapt  their  habits  to  the  nature  of  things, 
they  have  entered  the  path  of  health  and 
wisdom.  No  doubt  the  Hving  will  is  essen- 
tially absolute,  both  at  the  top  and  at  the 
bottom,  in  the  ferocious  animal  and  in  the 
rapt  spirit ;  but  it  is  absolute  even  then  only 
in  its  deliverance,  in  what  it  asserts  or 
demands  ;  nothing  can  be  less  absolute  or 
more  precarious  than  the  living  will  in  its 
existence.  A  living  will  is  the  flexible  voice 
of  a  thousand  submerged  impulses,  of  which 
now  one  and  now  another  comes  to  the 
surface  ;  it  is  responsive,  without  knowing 
it,  to  a  complex  forgotten  past  and  a  chang- 
ing, unexplored  environment.  The  will  is 
a  mass  of  passions  ;  when  it  sets  up  absolute 
claims  it  is  both  tragic  and  ridiculous.  It 
may  be  ready  to  be  a  martyr,  but  it  will  have 
to  be  one.  Martyrs  are  heroic  ;  but  unless 
they  have  the  nature  of  things  on  their  side 
and  their  cause^  can  be  victorious,  their 
heroism  is  like  that  of  criminals  and  mad- 

q2 


228     CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

men,  interesting  dramatically  but  morally 
detestable.  Madmen  and  criminals,  like 
other  martyrs,  appeal  to  the  popular  imagina- 
tion, because  in  each  of  us  there  is  a  little 
absolute  will,  or  a  colony  of  little  absolute 
wills,  aching  to  be  criminal,  mad,  and  heroic. 
Yet  the  equilibrium  by  which  we  exist  if  we 
are  sane,  and  which  we  call  reason,  keeps 
these  rebellious  dreams  under ;  if  they  run 
wild,  we  are  lost.  Reason  is  a  harmony  ; 
and  it  has  been  reputed  by  egotistical  philo- 
sophers to  rule  the  world  (in  which  unreason 
of  every  sort  is  fundamental  and  rampant), 
because  when  harmony  between  men  and 
nature  supervenes  at  any  place  or  in  any 
measure,  the  world  becomes  intelligible  and 
safe,  and  philosophers  are  able  to  live  in  it. 
The  passions,  even  in  a  rational  society, 
remain  the  elements  of  life,  but  under  mutual 
control,  and  the  life  of  reason,  like  English 
liberty,  is  a  perpetual  compromise.  Absol- 
ute liberty,  on  the  contrary,  is  impracticable  ; 
it  is  a  foolish  challenge  thrown  by  a  new-born 
insect  buzzing  against  the  universe  ;  it  is 
incompatible  with  more  than  one  pulse  of 
life.  All  the  declarations  of  independence 
in  the  world  will  not  render  anybody  really 


ENGLISH  LIBERTY  IN  AMERICA  229 

independent.  You  may  disregard  your  en- 
vironment, you  cannot  escape  it ;  and  your 
disregard  of  it  will  bring  you  moral  em- 
poverishment  and  some  day  unpleasant 
surprises.  Even  Robinson  Crusoe — whom 
offended  America  once  tried  to  imitate — 
lived  on  what  he  had  saved  from  the  wreck, 
on  footprints  and  distant  hopes.  Liberty  to 
be  left  alone,  not  interfered  with  and  not 
helped,  is  not  English  liberty.  It  is  the 
primeval  desire  of  every  wild  animal  or 
barbarous  tribe  or  jealous  city  or  religion, 
claiming  to  live  and  to  tramp  through  the 
world  in  its  own  sweet  way.  These  com- 
bative organisms,  however,  have  only  such 
strength  as  the  opposite  principle  of  co- 
operation lends  them  inwardly ;  and  the 
more  liberty  they  assume  in  foreign  affairs 
the  less  liberty  their  members  can  enjoy  at 
home.  At  home  they  must  then  have 
organisation  at  all  costs,  like  ancient  Sparta 
and  modern  Germany ;  and  even  if  the 
restraints  so  imposed  are  not  irksome  and 
there  is  spontaneous  unison  and  enthusiasm 
in  the  people,  the  basis  of  such  a  local 
harmony  will  soon  prove  too  narrow.  Nations 
and  religions  will  run  up  against  one  another, 


280     CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

against  change,  against  science,  against  all 
the  realities  they  had  never  reckoned  with  ; 
and  more  or  less  painfully  they  will  dissolve. 
And  it  will  not  be  a  normal  and  fruitful 
dissolution,  like  that  of  a  man  who  leaves 
children  and  heirs.  It  will  be  the  end  of 
that  evolution,  the  choking  of  that  ideal  in 
the  sand. 

This  collapse  of  fierce  liberty  is  no  ordinary 
mutation,  such  as  time  brings  sooner  or  later 
to  everything  that  exists,  when  the  circum- 
stances that  sustained  it  in  being  no  longer 
prevail.  It  is  a  de^p  tragedy,  because  the 
narrower  passions  and  swifter  harmonies  are 
more  beautiful  and  perfect  than  the  chaos  or 
the  dull  broad  equilibrium  that  may  take 
their  place.  Co-operative  life  is  reasonable 
and  long-winded ;  but  it  always  remains 
imperfect  itself,  while  it  somewhat  smothers 
the  impulses  that  enter  into  it.  Absolute 
liberty  created  these  elements  ;  inspiration, 
free  intelligence,  uncompromising  conviction, 
a  particular  home  and  breeding-ground,  were 
requisite  to  give  them  birth.  Nothing  good 
could  arise  for  co-operation  to  diffuse  or  to 
qualify  unless  first  there  had  been  complete 
liberty  for  the  artist  and  an  uncontaminated 


ENGLISH  LIBERTY  IN  AMERICA  281 

perfection  in  his  work.  Reason  and  the 
principle  of  EngHsh  liberty  have  no  creative 
afflatus  ;  they  presuppose  spontaneity  and 
yet  they  half  stifle  it ;  and  they  can  rest  in  no 
form  of  perfection,  because  they  must  remain 
plastic  and  continually  invite  amendments, 
in  order  to  continue  broadly  adjusted  to  an 
infinite  moving  world.  Their  work  is  accord- 
ingly like  those  cathedrals  at  which  many 
successive  ages  have  laboured,  each  in  its 
own  style.  We  may  regret,  sometimes,  that 
some  one  design  could  not  have  been  carried 
out  in  its  purity,  and  yet  all  these  secular 
accretions  have  a  wonderful  eloquence  ;  a 
comrqon  piety  and  love  of  beauty  have 
inspired  them ;  age  has  fused  them  and 
softened  their  incongruities ;  and  an  in- 
expressible magic  seems  to  hang  about  the 
composite  pile,  as  if  God  and  man  breathed 
deeply  within  it.  It  is  a  harmony  woven 
out  of  accidents,  like  every  work  of  time  and 
nature,  and  all  the  more  profound  and  fertile 
because  no  mind  could  ever  have  designed  it. 
Some  such  natural  structure,  formed  and 
reformed  by  circumstances,  is  the  requisite 
matrix  and  home  for  every  moral  being. 
Accordingly   there    seems   to    have    been 


282     CHARACTER  AND  OPINION 

sober  sense  and  even  severe  thought  behind 
the  rant  of  Webster  when  he  cried,  "  Liberty 
and  Union,  now  and  for  ever,  one  and  in- 
separable !  "  because  if  for  the  sake  of  Kberty 
you  abandon  union  and  resist  a  mutual 
adaptation  of  purposes  which  might  cripple 
each  of  them,  your  liberty  loses  its  massive- 
ness,  its  plasticity,  its  power  to  survive 
change  ;  it  ceases  to  be  tentative  and  human 
in  order  to  become  animal  and  absolute. 
Nature  must  always  produce  little  irre- 
sponsible passions  that  will  try  to  rule  her, 
but  she  can  never  crown  any  one  of  them 
with  more  than  a  theatrical  success  ;  the 
wrecks  of  absolute  empires,  communisms, 
and  religions  are  there  to  prove  it.  But 
English  liberty,  because  it  is  co-operative, 
because  it  calls  only  for  a  partial  and  shifting 
unanimity  among  living  men,  may  last 
indefinitely,  and  can  enlist  every  reasonable 
man  and  nation  in  its  service.  This  is  the 
best  heritage  of  America,  richer  than  its  virgin 
continents,  which  it  draws  from  the  temperate 
and  manly  spirit  of  England.  Certainly 
absolute  freedom  would  be  more  beautiful 
if  we  were  birds  or  poets  ;  but  co-operation 
and  a  loving  sacrifice  of  a  part  of  ourselves — 


ENGLISH  LIBERTY  IN  AMERICA  238 

or  even  of  the  whole,  save  the  love  in  us — 
are  beautiful  too,  if  we  are  men  living  together. 
Absolute  liberty  and  English  liberty  are  in- 
compatible, and  mankind  must  make  a 
painful  and  a  brave  choice  between  them. 
The  necessity  of  rejecting  and  destroying 
some  things  that  are  beautiful  is  the  deepest 
curse  of  existence. 


THE   END 


Printed  in  Great  BrUain  by  R.  &  R.  Clark.  Limited,  Edinburgh. 


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